ITHEWHEELOFT1ME 

COLLABORATION 

OWENWJNGRAVE 


I 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


The  Wheel  of  Time 

Collaboration 

OwenWingrave 


BY 

HENRY    JAMES 


NEW    YORK 

HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 
1893 


Copyright,  1893,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 


All  rigfits  nset-vcd. 


SRIF 


PS 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  WHEEL  OF  TIME 3 

COLLABORATION 99 

OWEN  WINGRAVE 147 


1201205 


THE   WHEEL    OF   TIME 


THE   WHEEL    OF   TIME 
I 

"  AND  your  daughter  ?"  said  Lady  Greys- 
wood  ;  "  tell  me  about  her.  She  must  be 
nice/' 

"Oh  yes,  she's  nice  enough.  She's  a 
great  comfort."  Mrs.  Knocker  hesitated  a 
moment,  then  she  went  on:  "Unfortunate 
ly,  she's  not  good-looking — not  a  bit." 

"That  doesn't  matter,  when  they're  not 
ill-natured,"  rejoined,  insincerely,  Lady 
Greyswoorl,  who  had  the  remains  of  great 
beauty. 

"  Oh,  but  poor  Fanny  is  quite  extraordi 
narily  plain.  I  assure  you  it  does  matter. 
She  knows  it  herself;  she  suffers  from  it. 
It's  the  sort  of  thing  that  makes  a  great 
difference  in  a  girl's  life." 

"  But  if  she's  charming,  if  she's  clever !" 


4  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

said  Lady  Greyswood,  with  more  benevo 
lence  than  logic.  "  I've  known  plain  wom 
en  who  were  liked." 

"  Do  you  mean  me,  my  dear  ?"  her  old 
friend  straightforwardly  inquired.  "  But  I'm 
not  so  awfully  liked." 

"You?"  Lady  Greyswood  exclaimed. 
"Why,  you're  grand  !•" 

"  I'm  not  so  repulsive  as  I  was  when  I 
was  young,  perhaps ;  but  that's  not  saying 
much." 

"  As  when  you  were  young !"  laughed 
Lady  Greyswood.  "  You  sweet  thing,  you 
are  young.  I  thought  India  dried  people 
up." 

"  Oh,  when  you're  a  mummy  to  begin 
with !"  Mrs.  Knocker  returned,  with  her 
trick  of  self-abasement.  "Of  course  I've 
not  been  such  a  fool  as  to  keep  my  children 
there.  My  girl  is  clever,"  she  continued, 
"but  she's  afraid  to  show  it.  Therefore 
you  may  judge  whether,  with  her  unfortu 
nate  appearance,  she's  charming." 

"  She  shall  show  it  to  me!  You  must  let 
me  do  everything  for  her." 

"Does  that  include  finding  her  a   hus- 


THE   WHEEL   OF    TIME  5 

band  ?  I  should  like  her  to  show  it  to 
some  one  who'll  marry  her." 

"/'ll  marry  her,"  said  Lady  Greyswood, 
who  was  handsomer  than  ever  when  she 
laughed  and  looked  capable. 

"What  a  blessing  to  meet  you  this  way 
on  the  threshold  of  home !  I  give  you  no 
tice  that  I  shall  cling  to  you.  But  that's 
what  I  meant ;  that's  the  thing  the  want  of 
beauty  makes  so  difficult — as  if  it  were  not 
difficult  enough  at  the  best." 

"  My  dear  child,  one  meets  plenty  of  ugly 
women  with  husbands,"  Lady  Greyswood 
argued,  "  and  often  with  very  nice  ones." 

"  Yes,  mine  is  very  nice.  There  are  men 
who  don't  mind  one's  face,  for  whom  beauty 
isn't  indispensable,  but  they  are  rare.  I 
don't  understand  them.  If  I'd  been  a  man 
about  to  marry  I  should  have  gone  in  for 
looks.  However,  the  poor  child  will  have 
something,"  Mrs.  Knocker  continued. 

Lady  Greyswood  rested  thoughtful  eyes 
on  her.  "  Do  you  mean  she'll  be  well  off  ?" 

"  We  shall  do  everything  we  can  for  her. 
We're  not  in  such  misery  as  we  used  to  be. 
We've  managed  to  save  in  India,  strange  to 


say,  and  six  months  ago  my  husband  came 
into  money  (more  than  we  had  ever  dreamed 
of)  by  the  death  of  his  poor  brother.  We 
feel  quite  opulent  (it's  rather  nice  !),  and  \ve 
should  expect  to  do  something  decent  for 
our  daughter.  I  don't  mind  it's  being 
known." 

"  It  shall  be  known,"  said  Lady  Greys- 
wood,  getting  up.  "  Leave  the  dear  child 
to  me."  The  old  friends  embraced,  for  the 
porter  of  the  hotel  had  come  in  to  say  that 
the  carriage  ordered  for  her  ladyship  was  at 
the  door.  They  had  met  in  Paris  by  the 
merest  chance,  in  the  court  of  an  inn,  after 
a  separation  of  years,  just  as  Lady  Greys- 
wood  was  going  home.  She  had  been  to 
Aix-les-Bains  early  in  the  season,  and  was 
resting  on  her  way  back  to  England.  Mrs. 
Knocker  and  the  General,  bringing  their 
eastern  exile  to  a  close,  had  arrived  only 
the  night  before  from  Marseilles,  and  were 
to  wait  in  Paris  for  their  children,  a  tall  girl 
and  two  younger  boys,  who,  inevitably  dis 
sociated  from  their  parents,  had  been  for 
the  past  two  years  with  a  devoted  aunt, 
their  father's  maiden  sister,  at  Heidelberg. 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME  7 

The  reunion  of  the  family  was  to  take  place 
with  jollity  in  Paris,  whither  this  good  lady 
was  now  hurrying  with  her  drilled  and  de 
moralized  charges.  Mrs.  Knocker  had  come 
to  England  to  see  them  two  years  before, 
and  the  period  at  Heidelberg  had  been 
planned  during  this  visit.  With  the  termi 
nation  of  her  husband's  service  a  new  life 
opened  before  them  all,  and  they  had  plans 
of  comprehensive  rejoicing  for  the  summer 
— plans  involving,  however,  a  continuance 
for  a  few  months  of  useful  foreign  opportu 
nities,  during  which  various  questions  con 
nected  with  the  organization  of  a  final  home 
in  England  were  practically  to  be  dealt  with. 
There  was  to  be  a  salubrious  house  on  the 
Continent,  taken  in  some  neighborhood  that 
would  both  yield  a  stimulus  to  plain  Fanny's 
French  (her  German  was  much  commended), 
and  permit  of  frequent  "running  over"  for 
the  General.  With  these  preoccupations 
Mrs.  Knocker,  after  her  delightful  encoun 
ter  with  Lady  Greyswood,  was  less  keenly 
conscious  of  the  variations  of  destiny  than 
she  had  been  when,  at  the  age  of  twenty, 
that  intimate  friend  of  her  youth,  beautiful, 


8  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

loveable,  and  about  to  be  united  to  a  noble 
man  of  ancient  name,  was  brightly,  almost 
insolently  alienated.  The  less  attractive  of 
the  two  girls  had  married  only  several  years 
later,  and  her  marriage  had  perhaps  empha 
sized  the  divergence  of  their  ways.  To-day, 
however,  the  inequality,  as  Mrs.  Knocker 
would  have  phrased  it,  rather  dropped  out 
of  the  impression  produced  by  the  somewhat 
wasted  and  faded  dowager,  exquisite  still, 
but  unexpectedly  appealing,  who  made  no 
secret  (an  attempt  that  in  an  age  of  such 
publicity  would  have  been  useless),  of  what 
she  had  had,  in  vulgar  parlance,  to  put  up 
with,  or  of  her  having  been  left  badly  off. 
She  had  spoken  of  her  children — she  had 
had  no  less  than  six — but  she  had  evidently 
thought  it  better  not  to  speak  of  her  hus 
band.  That  somehow  made  up,  on  Mrs. 
Knocker's  part,  for  some  ancient  aches. 

It  was  not  till  a  year  after  this  incident 
that,  one  day  in  London,  in  her  little  house 
in  Queen  Street,  Lady  Greyswood  said  to 
her  third  son,  Maurice  —  the  one  she  was 
fondest  of,  the  one  who  on  his  own  side  had 
given  her  most  signs  of  affection : 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME  9 

"  I  don't  see  what  there  is  for  you  but  to 
marry  a  girl  of  a  certain  fortune." 

"  Oh,  that's  not  my  line  !  I  may  be  an 
idiot,  but  I'm  not  mercenary,"  the  young 
man  declared.  He  was  not  an  idiot,  but 
there  was  an  examination — rather  stiff,  in 
deed —  to  which,  without  success,  he  had 
gone  up  twice.  The  diplomatic  service  was 
closed  to  him  by  this  catastrophe;  nothing 
else  appeared  particularly  open  ;  he  was  ter 
ribly  at  leisure.  There  had  been  a  theory, 
none  the  less,  that  he  was  the  ablest  of  the 
family.  Two  of  his  brothers  had  been 
squeezed  into  the  army,  and  had  declared 
rather  crudely  that  they  would  do  their  best 
to  keep  Maurice  out.  They  were  not  put  to 
any  trouble  in  this  respect,  however,  as  he 
professed  a  complete  indifference  to  the 
trade  of  arms.  His  mother,  who  was  vague 
about  everything  except  the  idea  that  peo 
ple  ought  to  like  him,  if  only  for  his  extraor 
dinary  good  looks,  thought  it  strange  there 
shouldn't  be  some  opening  for  him  in  politi 
cal  life,  or  something  to  be  picked  up  even 
in  the  City.  But  no  bustling  borough  so 
licited  the  advantage  of  his  protection,  no 


10  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

eminent  statesman  in  want  of  a  secretary 
took  him  by  the  hand,  no  great  commercial 
house  had  been  keeping  a  stool  for  him. 
Maurice,  in  a  word,  was  not  "  approached  " 
from  any  quarter,  and  meanwhile  he  was  as 
irritating  as  the  intending  traveller  who  al 
lows  you  the  pleasure  of  looking  out  his 
railway -connections.  Poor  Lady  Greys- 
wood  fumbled  the  social  Bradshaw  in  vain. 
The  young  man  had  only  one  marked  taste, 
with  which  his  mother  saw  no  way  to  deal — 
an  invincible  passion  for  photography.  He 
was  perpetually  taking  shots  at  his  friends, 
but  she  couldn't  open  premises  for  him  in 
Baker  Street.  He  smoked  endless  ciga 
rettes — she  was  sure  they  made  him  languid. 
She  would  have  been  more  displeased  with 
him  if  she  had  not  felt  so  vividly  that  some 
one  ought  to  do  something  for  him ;  never 
theless  she  almost  lost  patience  at  his  remark 
about  not  being  mercenary.  She  was  on 
the  point  of  asking  him  what  he  called  it  to 
live  on  his  relations,  but  she  checked  the 
words,  as  she  remembered  that  she  herself 
was  the  only  one  who  did  much  for  him. 
Nevertheless,  as  she  hated  open  professions 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME  II 

of  disinterestedness,  she  replied  that  that 
was  a  nonsensical  tone.  Whatever  one 
should  get  in  such  a  way  one  would  give 
quite  as  much,  even  if  it  didn't  happen  to 
be  money ;  and  when  he  inquired  in  return 
what  it  was  (beyond  the  disgrace  of  his  fail 
ures)  that  she  judged  a  fellow  like  him 
would  bring  to  his  bride,  she  replied  that 
he  would  bring  himself,  his  personal  quali 
ties  (she  didn't  like  to  be  more  definite  about 
his  appearance),  his  name,  his  descent,  his 
connections — good  honest  commodities  all, 
for  which  any  girl  of  proper  feeling  would 
be  glad  to  pay.  Such  a  name  as  that  of  the 
Glanvils  was  surely  worth  something,  and 
she  appealed  to  him  to  try  what  he  could  do 
with  it. 

"  Surely  I  can  do  something  better  with 
it  than  sell  it,"  said  Maurice. 

"  I  should  like,  then,  very  much  to  hear 
what,"  she  replied,  very  calmly,  waiting 
reasonably  for  his  answer.  She  waited  to 
no  purpose ;  the  question  baffled  him,  like 
those  of  his  examinations.  She  explained 
that  she  meant  of  course  that  he  should  care 
for  the  girl,  who  might  easily  have  a  worse 


12  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

fault  than  the  command  of  bread  and  butter. 
To  humor  her,  for  he  was  always  good- 
natured,  he  said,  after  a  moment,  smiling  : 

"  Dear  mother,  is  she  pretty  ?" 

"  Is  who  pretty  ?" 

"  The  young  lady  you  have  in  your  eye. 
Of  course  I  see  you've  picked  her  out." 

She  colored  slightly  at  this  —  she  had 
planned  a  more  gradual  revelation.  For  an 
instant  she  thought  of  saying  that  she  had 
only  had  a  general  idea,  for  the  form  of  his 
question  embarrassed  her;  but  on  reflection 
she  determined  to  be  frank  and  practical. 
"Well,  I  confess  I  am  thinking  of  a  girl — 
a  very  nice  one.  But  she  hasn't  great 
beauty." 

"  Oh,  then  it's  of  no  use." 

"  But  she's  delightful,  and  she'll  have 
thirty  thousand  pounds  down,  to  say  noth 
ing  of  expectations." 

Maurice  Glanvil  looked  at  his  mother. 
"She  must  be  hideous — for  you  to  admit 
it.  Therefore,  if  she's  rich,  she  becomes 
quite  impossible ;  for  how  can  a  fellow  have 
the  air  of  having  been  bribed  with  gold  to 
marry  a  monster  ?" 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME  13 

"  Fanny  Knocker  isn't  the  least  a  monster, 
and  I  can  see  that  she'll  improve.  She's 
tall,  and  she's  quite  strong,  and  there's 
nothing  at  all  disagreeable  about  her.  Re 
member  that  you  can't  have  everything." 

"  I  thought  you  contended  that  I  could  !" 
said  Maurice,  amused  at  his  mother's  de 
scription  of  her  young  friend's  charms.  He 
had  never  heard  any  one  damned,  as  regards 
that  sort  of  thing,  with  fainter  praise.  He 
declared  that  he  would  be  perfectly  capable 
of  marrying  a  poor  girl,  but  that  the  prime 
necessity  in  any  young  person  he  should 
think  of  would  be  the  possession  of  a  face 
— to  put  it  at  the  least — that  it  would  give 
him  positive  pleasure  to  look  at.  "  I  don't 
ask  for  much,  but  I  do  ask  for  beauty,"  he 
went  on.  "  My  eye  must  be  gratified  —  I 
must  have  a  wife  I  can  photograph." 

Lady  Greyswood  was  tempted  to  answer 
that  he  himself  had  good  looks  enough  to 
make  a  handsome  couple,  but  she  withheld 
the  remark  as  injudicious,  though  effective, 
for  it  was  a  part  of  her  son's  amiability  that 
he  appeared  to  have  no  conception  of  his 
plastic  side.  He  would  have  been  disgusted 


14  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

if  she  had  put  it  forward ;  if  he  had  the 
ideal  he  had  just  described,  it  was  not  be 
cause  his  own  profile  was  his  standard. 
What  she  herself  saw  in  it  was  a  force  for 
coercing  heiresses.  She  had,  however,  to  be 
patient,  and  she  promised  herself  to  be 
adroit ;  which  was  all  the  easier,  as  she 
really  liked  Fanny  Knocker. 

The  girl's  parents  had  at  last  taken  a 
house  in  Ennismore  Gardens,  and  t-he  friend 
of  her  mother's  youth  had  been  confronted 
with  the  question  of  redeeming  the  pledges 
uttered  in  Paris.  This  unsophisticated  and 
united  family,  with  relations  to  visit  and 
school-boys'  holidays  to  outlive,  had  spent 
the  winter  in  the  country  and  had  but  lately 
begun  to  talk  of  itself,  extravagantly,  of 
course,  through  Mrs.  Knocker's  droll  lips, 
as  open  to  social  attentions.  Lady  Greys- 
wood  had  not  been  false  to  her  vows ;  she 
had,  on  the  contrary,  recognized  from  the 
first  that,  if  he  could  only  be  made  to  see  it, 
Fanny  Knocker  would  be  just  the  person  to 
fill  out  poor  Maurice's  blanks.  She  had 
kept  this  confidence  to  herself,  but  it  had 
made  her  very  kind  to  the  young  lady.  One 


THE   WHEEL   OF    TLME  15 

of  the  forms  of  this  kindness  had  been  an 
ingenuity  in  keeping  her  from  coming  to 
Queen  Street  until  Maurice  should  have 
been  prepared.  Was  he  to  be  regarded  as 
prepared,  now  that  he  asserted  he  would 
have  nothing  to  do  with  Miss  Knocker  ? 
This  was  a  question  that  worried  Lady 
Greyswood,  who  at  any  rate  said  to  herself 
that  she  had  told  him  the  worst.  Her  idea 
had  been  to  sound  her  old  friend  only  after 
the  young  people  should  have  met,  and 
Fanny  should  have  fallen  in  love.  Such  a 
catastrophe  for  Fanny  belonged,  for  Lady 
Greyswood,  to  that  order  of  convenience 
that  she  could  always  take  for  granted. 

She  had  found  the  girl,  as  she  expected, 
ugly  and  awkward,  but  had  also  discovered 
a  charm  of  character  in  her  intelligent  timid 
ity.  No  one  knew  better  than  this  observ 
ant  woman  how  thankless  a  task  in  general 
it  Was  in  London  to  "  take  out  "  a  plain  girl ; 
she  had  seen  the  nicest  creatures,  in-  the 
brutality  of  balls,  participate  only  through 
wistful,  almost  tearful  eyes  ;  her  little  draw 
ing-room,  at  intimate  hours,  had  been  shaken 
by  the  confidences  of  desperate  mothers. 


16  THE   WHEEL    OF   TIME 

None  the  less  she  felt  sure  that  Fanny's 
path  would  not  be  rugged  ;  thirty  thousand 
pounds  were  a  fine  set  of  features,  and  her 
anxiety  was  rather  on  the  score  of  the  ex 
pectations  of  the  young  lady's  parents.  Mrs. 
Knocker  had  dropped  remarks  suggestive 
of  a  high  imagination,  of  the  conviction 
that  there  might  be  a  real  efficacy  in  what 
they  were  doing  for  their  daughter.  The 
danger,  in  other  words,  might  well  be  that  no 
younger  son  need  apply — a  possibility  that 
made  Lady  Greyswood  take  all  her  precau 
tions.  The  acceptability  of  her  favorite 
child  was  consistent  with  the  rejection  of 
those  of  other  people — on  which,  indeed,  it 
even  directly  depended.  She  remembered, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  proverb  about  taking 
your  horse  to  the  water;  the  crystalline 
spring  of  her  young  friend's  homage  might 
overflow,  but  she  couldn't  compel  her  boy 
to  drink.  The  clever  way  was  to  break 
down  his  prejudice — to  get  him  to  consent 
to  give  poor  Fanny  a  chance. .  Therefore,  if 
she  was  careful  not  to  worry  him,  she  let 
him  see  her  project  as  something  patient 
and  deeply  wise ;  she  had  the  air  of  waiting 


THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME  17 

resignedly  for  the  day  on  which,  in  the  ab 
sence  of  other  solutions,  he  would  say  to 
her :  "  Well,  let  me  have  a  look  at  my  fate  !" 
Meanwhile,  moreover,  she  was  nothing  if  not 
conscientious,  and  as  she  had  made  up  her 
mind  about  the  girl's  susceptibility,  she  had 
a  scruple  against  exposing  her.  This  ex 
posure  would  not  be  justified  so  long  as 
Maurice's  theoretic  rigor  should  remain  un 
abated. 

She  felt  virtuous  in  carrying  her  scruple 
to  the  point  of  rudeness  ;  she  knew  that 
Jane  Knocker  wondered  why,  though  so  at 
tentive  in  a  hundred  ways,  she  had  never 
definitely  included  the  poor  child  in  any 
invitation  to  Queen  Street.  There  came  a 
moment  when  it  gave  her  pleasure  to  sus 
pect  that  her  old  friend  had  begun  to  ex 
plain  this  omission  by  the  idea  of  a  positive 
exaggeration  of  good  faith — an  honest  recog 
nition  of  the  detrimental  character  of  the 
young  man  in  ambush  there.  As  Maurice, 
though  much  addicted  to  kissing  his  mother 
at  home,  never  dangled  about  her  in  public, 
he  had  remained  a  mythical  figure  to  Mrs. 
Knocker ;  he  had  been  absent  (culpably — 


l8  THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME 

there  was  a  touch  of  the  inevitable  incivility 
in  it)  on  each  of  the  occasions  on  which, 
after  their  arrival  in  London,  she  and  her 
husband  dined  with  Lady  Greyswood.  This 
astute  woman  knew  that  her  delightful  Jane 
was  whimsical  enough  to  be  excited  good- 
humoredly  by  a  mystery  ;  she  might  very 
well  want  to  make  Maurice's  acquaintance 
in  just  the  degree  in  which  she  guessed  that 
his  mother's  high  sense  of  honor  kept  him 
out  of  the  way.  Moreover,  she  desired  in 
tensely  that  her  daughter  should  have  the 
sort  of  experience  that  would  help  her  to 
take  confidence.  Lady  Greyswood  knew 
that  no  one  had  as  yet  asked  the  girl  to 
dinner,  and  that  this  particular  attention 
was  the  one  for  which  her  mother  would  be 
most  grateful.  No  sooner  had  she  arrived 
at  these  illuminations  than,  with  deep  diplo 
macy,  she  requested  the  pleasure  of  the 
company  of  her  dear  Jane  and  the  General. 
Mrs.  Knocker  accepted  with  delight — she 
always  accepted  with  delight — so  that  noth 
ing  remained  for  Lady  Greyswood  but  to 
make  sure  of  Maurice  in  advance.  After 
this  was  done  she  had  only  to  wait.  When 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME  19 

the  dinner,  on  a  day  very  near  at  hand, 
took  place  (she  had  jumped  at  the  first 
evening  on  which  the  Knockers  were  free) 
she  had  the  gratification  of  seeing  her  pre 
vision  exactly  fulfilled.  Her  whimsical  Jane 
had  thrown  the  game  into  her  hands,  had 
been  taken  at  the  very  last  moment  with 
one  of  her  Indian  headaches  and,  infinitely 
apologetic  and  explanatory,  had  hustled 
poor  Fanny  off  with  the  General.  The  girl, 
flurried  and  frightened  by  her  responsibility, 
sat  at  dinner  next  to  Maurice,  who  behaved 
beautifully — not  in  the  least  as  the  victim 
of  a  trick  ;  and  when  a  fortnight  later  Lady 
Greyswood  was  able  to  divine  that  her  mind 
from  that  evening  had  been  filled  with  a 
virginal  ecstasy,  she  was  also  fortunately 
able  to  feel  serenely,  delightfully  guitless. 


II 


SHE  knew  this  fact  about  Fanny's  mind, 
she  believed,  some  time  before  Jane 
Knocker  knew  it;  but  she  also  had  reason 
to  think  that  Jane  Knocker  had  known  it 


20  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

for  some  time  before  she  spoke  of  it.  It 
was  not  till  the  middle  of  June,  after  a  suc 
cession  of  encounters  between  the  young 
people,  that  her  old  friend  came  one  morn 
ing  to  discuss  the  circumstance.  Mrs. 
Knocker  asked  her  if  she  suspected  it,  and 
she  promptly  replied  that  it  had  never  oc 
curred  to  her.  She  added  that  she  was  ex 
tremely  sorry,  and  that  it  had  probably  in 
the  first  instance  been  the  fault  of  that  inju 
dicious  dinner. 

"  Ah,  the  day  of  my  headache — my  mis 
erable  headache  ?"  said  her  visitor.  "Yes, 
very  likely  that  did  it.  He's  so  dreadfully 
good-looking." 

"  Poor  child,  he  can't  help  that.  Neither 
can  I !"  Lady  Greyswood  ventured  to  add. 

"  He  comes  by  it  honestly.  He  seems 
very  nice." 

"  He's  nice  enough,  but  he  hasn't  a  far 
thing,  you  know,  and  his  expectations  are 
nil."  They  considered,  they  turned  the 
matter  about,  they  wondered  what  they  had 
better  do.  In  the  first  place  there  was  no 
room  for  doubt ;  of  course  Mrs.  Knocker 
hadn't  sounded  the  girl,  but  a  mother,  a 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME  21 

true  mother,  was  never  reduced  to  that.  If 
Fanny  was  in  every  relation  of  life  so  pain 
fully,  so  constitutionally  awkward,  the  still 
depths  of  her  shyness,  of  her  dissimulation 
even,  in  such  a  predicament  as  this,  might 
easily  be  imagined.  She  would  give  no 
sign  that  she  could  possibly  smother,  she 
would  say  nothing  and  do  nothing,  watch 
ing  herself,  poor  child,  with  trepidation  ;  but 
she  would  suffer,  and  some  day,  when  the 
question  of  her  future  should  really  come 
up — it  might,  after  all,  in  the  form  of  some 
good  proposal — they  would  find  themselves 
beating  against  a  closed  door.  That  was 
what  they  had  to  think  of ;  that  was  why 
Mrs.  Knocker  had  come  over.  Her  old 
friend  cross-examined  her  with  a  troubled 
face,  but  she  was  very  impressive  with  her 
reasons,  her  intuitions. 

"  I'll  send  him  away  in  a  moment,  if 
you'd  like  that,"  Lady  Greyswood  said  at 
last.  "  I'll  try  and  get  him  to  go  abroad." 

Her  visitor  made  no  direct  reply  to  this, 
and  no  reply  at  all  for  some  moments. 
"  What  does  he  expect  to  do — what  does  he 
want  to  do  ?"  she  asked. 


22  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

"  Oh,  poor  boy,  he's  looking — he's  trying 
to  decide.  He  asks  nothing  of  any  one.  If 
he  would  only  knock  at  a  few  doors !  But 
he's  too  proud." 

"Do  you  call  him  very  clever?"  Fanny's 
mother  demanded. 

"  Yes,  decidedly  ;  and  good  and  kind  and 
true.  But  he  has  been  unlucky." 

"Of  course  he  can't  bear  her  !"  said  Mrs. 
Knocker,  with  a  little  dry  laugh. 

"  Lady  Greyswood  stared  ;  then  she 
broke  out  :  "  Do  you  mean  you'd  be 
willing —  ?" 

"  He's  very  charming.'' 

"  Ah,  but  you  must  have  great  ideas." 

"  He's  very  well  connected,"  said  Mrs. 
Knocker,  snapping  the  tight  elastic  on  her 
umbrella. 

"  Oh,  my  dear  Jane — '  connected  !'  "  Lady 
Greyswood  gave  a  sigh  of  the  sweetest  irony. 

"  He's  connected  with  you,  to  begin  with." 

Lady  Greyswood  put  out  her  hand  and 
held  her  visitor's  for  a  moment.  "  Of 
course  it  isn't  as  if  he  were  a  different  sort 
of  person.  Of  course  I  should  like  it !"  she 
added. 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME  23 

"  Does  he  dislike  her  very  much  ?" 
Lady  Greyswood   looked    at   her  friend 
with  a  smile.     "  He  resembles  Fanny — he 
doesn't  tell.     But  what   would   her   father 
say  ?"  she  went  on. 
"  He  doesn't  know  it." 
"  You've  not  talked  with  him  ?" 
Mrs.  Knocker  hesitated  a  moment.     "  He 
thinks    she's   all   right."     Both    the    ladies 
laughed   a   little   at   the    density  of   men  ; 
then  the  visitor  said :    "  I  wanted   to   see 
you  first." 

This  circumstance  gave  Lady  Greyswood 
food  for  thought ;  it  suggested  comprehen 
sively  that,  in  spite  of  a  probable  deficiency 
of  zeal  on  the  General's  part,  the  worthy 
man  would  not  be  the  great  obstacle.  She 
had  begun  so  quickly  to  turn  over  in  her 
mind  the  various  ways  in  which  this  new 
phase  of  the  business  might  make  it  pos 
sible  the  real  obstacle  should  be  sur 
mounted  that  she  scarcely  heard  her  com 
panion  say  next :  "  The  General  will  only 
want  his  daughter  to  be  happy.  He  has 
no  definite  ambitions  for  her.  I  dare  say 
Maurice  could  make  him  like  him."  It 


24  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

was  something  more  said  by  her  compan 
ion  about  Maurice  that  sounded  sharply 
through  her  reverie.  "  But  unless  the  idea 

O 

appeals  to  him  a  bit  there's  no  use  talking 
about  it." 

"At  this  Lady  Greyswood  spoke  with  de 
cision.  "  It  shall  appeal  to  him.  Leave  it 
to  me !  Kiss  your  dear  child  for  me,"  she 
added,  as  the  ladies  embraced  and  sepa 
rated. 

In  the  course  of  the  day  she  made  up  her 
mind,  and  when  she  again  broached  the 
question  to  her  son  (it  befell  that  very  even 
ing)  she  felt  that  she  stood  on  firmer 
ground.  She  began  by  mentioning  to  him 
that  her  dear  old  friend  had  the  same 
charming  dream  —  for  the  girl  —  that  she 
had  ;  she  sketched  with  a  light  hand  a  pict 
ure  of  their  preconcerted  happiness  in  the 
union  of  their  children.  When  he  replied 
that  he  couldn't  for  the  life  of  him  imagine 
what  the  Knockers  could  see  in  a  poor  beg 
gar  of  a  younger  son  who  had  publicly 
come  a  cropper,  she  took  pains  to  prove 
that  he  was  as  good  as  any  one  else,  and 
much  better  than  many  of  the  young  men 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME  25 

to  whom  persons  of  sense  were  often  willing 
to  confide  their  daughters.  She  had  been 
in  much  tribulation  over  the  circumstance 
announced  to  her  in  the  morning,  not  know 
ing  whether,  in  her  present  enterprise,  to 
keep  it  back  or  put  it  forward.  If  Maurice 
should  happen  not  to  take  it  in  the  right 
way,  it  was  the  sort  of  thing  that  might  dish 
the  whole  experiment.  He  might  be  bored, 
he  might  be  annoyed,  he  might  be  horrified 
— there  was  no  limit  in  such  cases  to  the 
perversity,  to  the  possible  brutality  of  even 
the  most  amiable  man.  On  the  other  hand 
he  might  be  pleased,  touched,  flattered — if 
he  didn't  dislike  the  girl  too  much.  Lady 
Greyswood  could  indeed  imagine  that  it 
might  be  unpleasant  to  know  that  a  person 
who  was  disagreeable  to  you  was  in  love 
with  you  ;  so  that  there  was  just  that  risk 
to  run.  She  determined  to  run  it  only  if 
there  should  be  absolutely  no  other  card  to 
play.  Meanwhile  she  said :  "  Don't  you  see, 
now,  how  intelligent  she  is,  in  her  quiet  way, 
and  how  perfect  she  is  at  home — without 
any  nonsense  or  affectation  or  ill -nature? 
She's  not  a  bit  stupid,  she's  remarkably 


26  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

clever.  She  can  do  a  lot  of  things  ;  she  has 
no  end  of  talents.  Many  girls  with  a  quar 
ter  of  her  abilities  would  make  five  times 
the  show." 

"  My  dear  mother,  she's  a  great  swell ;  I 
freely  admit  it.  She's  far  too  good  for  me. 
What  in  the  world  puts  it  into  your  two 
heads  that  she  would  look  at  me  ?" 

At  this  Lady  Greyswood  was  tempted  to 
speak ;  but  after  an  instant  she  said,  instead  : 
"  She  has  looked  at  you,  and  you've  seen 
how.  You've  seen  her  several  times  now, 
and  she  has  been  remarkably  nice  to  you." 

"  Nice  ?  Ah,  poor  girl,  she's  frightened 
to  death  !" 

"Believe  me — I  read  her,"  Lady  Greys- 
wood  replied. 

"  She  knows  she  has  money,  and  she 
thinks  I'm  after  it.  She  thinks  I'm  a  rav 
ening  wolf,  and  she's  scared." 

"  I  happen  to  know,  as  a  fact,  that  she's 
in  love  with  you  !"  Before  she  could  check 
herself  Lady  Greyswood  had  played  her 
card,  and  though  she  held  her  breath  a  lit 
tle  after  doing  so,  she  felt  that  it  had  been 
a  good  moment.  "  If  I  hadn't  known  it," 


THE    WHEEL   OF    TIME  27 

she  hastened  further  to  declare,  "  I  should 
never  have  said  another  word."  Maurice 
burst  out  laughing — how  in  the  world  did 
she  know  it  ?  When  she  put  the  evidence 
before  him  she  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing 
that  he  listened  without  irritation ;  and  this 
emboldened  her  to  say  :  "  Don't  you  think 
you  could  try  to  like  her  ?" 

Maurice  was  lounging  on  a  sofa  opposite 
to  her ;  jocose  but  embarrassed,  he  had 
thrown  back  his  head,  and  while  he 
stretched  himself  his  eyes  wandered  over 
the  upper  expanse  of  the  room.  "  It's  very 
kind  of  her  and  of  her  mother,  and  I'm 
much  obliged  and  all  that,  though  a  fellow 
feels  rather  an  ass  in  talking  about  such  a 
thing.  Of  course,  also,  I  don't  pretend — be 
fore  such  a  proof  of  wisdom — that  I  think 
her  in  the  least  a  fool.  But,  oh,  dear — !" 
And  the  young  man  broke  off  with  laughing 
impatience,  as  if  he  had  too  much  to  say. 
His  mother  waited  an  instant,  then  she 
uttered  a  persuasive,  interrogative  sound, 
and  he  went  on  :  "  It's  only  a  pity  she's  so 
awful !" 

"  So  awful  ?"  murmured  Lady  Greyswood. 


28  THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME 

"  Dear  mother,  she's  about  as  ugly  a 
woman  as  ever  turned  round  on  you.  If 
there  were  only  just  a  touch  or  two  less 
of  it !" 

Lady  Greyswood  got  up ;  she  stood  look 
ing  in  silence  at  the  tinted  shade  of  the 
lamp.  She  remained  in  this  position  so 
long  that  he  glanced  at  her — he  was  struck 
with  the  sadness  in  her  face.  He  would 
have  been  in  error,  however,  if  he  had 
suspected  that  this  sadness  was  assumed 
for  the  purpose  of  showing  him  that  she 
was  wounded  by  his  resistance,  for  the  re 
flection  that  his  last  words  caused  her  to 
make  was  as  disinterested  as  it  was  melan 
choly.  Here  was  an  excellent,  a  charming 
girl — a  girl,  she  was  sure,  with  a  rare  ca 
pacity  for  devotion — whose  future  was  re 
duced  to  nothing  by  the  mere  accident,  in 
her  face,  of  a  certain  want  of  drawing.  A 
man  could  settle  her  fate  with  a  laugh, 
could  give  her  away  with  a  snap  of  his  fin 
gers.  She  seemed  to  see  Maurice  administer 
to  poor  Fanny's  image  the  little  displeased 
shove  with  which  he  would  have  disposed 
of  an  ill-seasoned  dish.  Moreover,  he  great- 


THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME  29 

ly  exaggerated.  Her  heart  grew  heavy  with 
a  sense  of  the  hardness  of  the  lot  of  women, 
and  when  she  looked  again  at  her  son  there 
were  tears  in  her  eyes  that  startled  him. 
"  Poor  girl — poor  girl !"  she  simply  sighed, 
in  a  tone  that  was  to  reverberate  in  his  mind 
and  to  constitute  in  doing  so  a  real  appeal 
to  his  imagination.  After  a  moment  she  add 
ed  :  "  We'll  talk  no  more  about  her — no,  no !" 
All  the  same  she  went  three  days  later  to 
see  Mrs.  Knocker  and  say  to  her  :  "  My 
dear  creature,  I  think  it's  all  right." 
"  Do  you  mean  he'll  take  us  up  ?" 
"  He'll  come  and  see  you,  and  you  must 
give  him  plenty  of  chances."  What  Lady 
Greyswood  would  have  liked  to  be  able  to 
say,  crudely  and  comfortably,  was,  "  He'll 
try  to  manage  it — he  promises  to  do  what 
he  can."  What  she  did  say,  however,  was, 
"  He's  greatly  prepossessed  in  the  dear 
child's  favor." 

"  Then  I  dare  say  he'll  be  very  nice." 
"  If  I  didn't  think  he'd  behave  like  a  gen 
tleman  I  wouldn't  raise  a  finger.    The  more 
he  sees  of  her  the  more  he'll  be  sure  to  like 
her." 


3o  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

"Of  course  with  poor  Fanny  that's  the 
only  thing  one  can  build  on,"  said  Mrs. 
Knocker.  "  There's  so  much  to  get  over." 

Lady  Greyswood  hesitated  a  moment. 
"  Maurice  has  got  over  it.  But  I  should 
tell  you  that  at  first  he  doesn't  want  it 
known." 

"  Doesn't  want  what  known  ?" 

"Why,  the  footing  on  which  he  comes. 
You  see  it's  just  the  least  bit  experimental." 

"  For  what  do  you  take  me  ?"  asked  Mrs. 
Knocker.  "The  child  shall  never  dream 
that  anything  has  ever  passed  between  us. 
No  more  of  course  shall  her  father." 

"  It's  too  delightful  of  you  to  leave  it 
that  way,"  Lady  Greyswood  replied.  "  We 
must  surround  her  happiness  with  every 
safeguard." 

Mrs.  Knocker  sat  pensive  for  some  mo 
ments.  "  So  that,  if  nothing  comes  of  it, 
there's  no  harm  done  ?  That  idea  —  that 
nothing  may  come  of  it  —  makes  one  a  little 
nervous,"  she  added. 

"  Of  course  I  can't  absolutely  answer  for 
my  poor  boy !"  said  Lady  Greyswood,  with 
just  the  faintest  ring  of  impatience.  "  But 


THE    WHEEL   OF   TIME  31 

he's  much  affected  by  what  he  knows  —  I 
told  him.     That's  what  moves  him." 
"  He  must  of  course  be  perfectly  free." 
"The    great    thing    is    for    her    not    to 
know." 

Mrs.  Knocker  considered.  "  Are  you  very 
sure  ?"  She  had  apparently  had  a  profound- 
er  second  thought. 

"  Why,  my  dear — with  the  risk  !" 
"  Isn't  the  risk,  after  all,  greater  the  other 
way?  Mayn't  it  help  the  matter  on,  mayn't 
it  do  the  poor  child  a  certain  degree  of 
good,  the  idea  that,  as  you  say,  he's  pre 
possessed  in  her  favor?  It  would  perhaps 
cheer  her  up,  as  it  were,  and  encourage  her, 
so  that  by  the  very  fact  of  being  happier 
about  herself  she  may  make  a  better  impres 
sion.  That's  what  she  wants,  poor  thing — 
to  be  helped  to  hold  up  her  head,  to  take 
herself  more  seriously,  to  believe  that  peo 
ple  can  like  her.  And  fancy,  when  it's  a 
case  of  such  a  beautiful  young  man  who's 
all  ready  to !" 

"Yes,  he's  all  ready  to,"  Lady  Greys- 
wood  conceded.  "  Of  course  it's  a  ques 
tion  for  your  own  discretion.  I  can't  advise 


32  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

you,  for  you  know  your  child.  But  it  seems 
to  me  a  case  for  tremendous  caution." 

"  Oh,  trust  me  for  that !"  said  Mrs.  Knock 
er.  "  We  shall  be  very  kind  to  him,"  she 
smiled,  as  her  visitor  got  up. 

"  He'll  appreciate  that.  But  it's  too  nice 
of  you  to  leave  it  so." 

Mrs.  Knocker  gave  a  hopeful  shrug.  "  He 
has  only  to  be  civil  to  Blake  !" 

"  Ah,  he  isn't  a  brute  !"  Lady  Greyswood 
exclaimed,  caressing  her. 

After  this  she  passed  a  month  of  no  little 
anxiety.  She  asked  her  son  no  question, 
and  for  two  or  three  weeks  he  offered  her 
no  other  information  than  to  say  two  or 
three  times  that  Miss  Knocker  really  could 
ride ;  but  she  learned  from  her  old  friend 
everything  she  wanted  to  know.  Immedi 
ately  after  the  conference  of  the  two  ladies 
Maurice,  in  the  Row,  had  taken  an  oppor 
tunity  of  making  up  to  the  girl.  She  rode 
every  day  with  her  father,  and  Maurice  rode, 
though  possessed  of  nothing  in  life  to  put  a 
leg  across ;  and  he  had  been  so  well  re 
ceived  that  this  proved  the  beginning  of  a 
custom.  He  had  a  canter  with  the  young 


THE   WHEEL   OF    TIME  33 

lady  most  days  in  the  week,  and  when  they 
parted  it  was  usually  to  meet  again  in  the 
evening.  His  relations  with  the  household 
in  Ennismore  Gardens  were  indeed  not  left 
greatly  to  his  initiative  ,  he  became  on  the 
spot  the  subject  of  perpetual  invitations  and 
arrangements,  the  centre  of  the  friendliest 
manoeuvres ;  so  that  Lady  Greyswood  was 
struck  with  Jane  Knocker's  feverish  energy 
in  the  good  cause — the  ingenuity,  the  bri 
bery,  the  cunning  that  an  exemplary  mother 
might  be  inspired  to  practise.  She  herself 
did  nothing,  she  left  it  all  to  poor  Jane,  and 
this  perhaps  gave  her  for  the  moment  a 
sense  of  contemplative  superiority.  She 
wondered  if  she  would  in  any  circumstances 
have  plotted  so  almost  fiercely  for  one  of 
her  children.  She  was  glad  her  old  friend's 
design  had  her  full  approbation ,  she  held 
her  breath  a  little  when  she  said  to  herself: 
"  Suppose  I  hadn't  liked  it — suppose  it  had 
been  for  Chumleigh !"  Chumleigh  was  the 
present  Lord  Greyswood,  whom  his  mother 
still  called  by  his  earlier  designation.  Fanny 
Knocker's  thirty  thousand  would  have  been 
by  no  means  enough  for  Chumleigh.  Lady 


Greyswood,  in  spite  of  her  suspense,  was 
detached  enough  to  be  amused  when  her 
accomplice  told  her  that  "  Blake  "  had  said 
that  Maurice  really  could  ride.  The  two 
mothers  thanked  God  for  the  riding  — 
the  riding  would  see  them  through.  Lady 
Greyswood  had  watched  Fanny  narrowly  in 
the  Park,  where,  in  the  saddle,  she  looked 
no  worse  than  lots  of  girls.  She  had  no 
idea  how  Maurice  got  his  mounts — she  knew 
Chumleigh  had  none  to  give  him  ;  but  there 
were  directions  in  which  she  would  have  en 
couraged  him  to  incur  almost  any  liability. 
He  was  evidently  amused  and  beguiled ;  he 
fell  into  comfortable  attitudes  on  the  soft 
cushions  that  were  laid  for  him  and  partook 
with  relish  of  the  dainties  that  were  served , 
he  had  his  fill  of  the  theatres,  of  the  opera 
— entertainments  of  which  he  was  fond. 
She  could  see  he  didn't  care  for  the  sort  of 
people  he  met  in  Ennismore  Gardens,  but 
this  didn't  matter ;  so  much  as  that  she 
didn't  ask  of  him.  She  knew  that  when  he 
should  have  something  to  tell  her  he  would 
speak ;  and  meanwhile  she  pretended  to  be 
a  thousand  miles  away.  The  only  thing 


THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME  35 

that  worried  her  was  that  he  had  dropped 
photography.  She  said  to  Mrs.  Knocker 
more  than  once  :  "  Does  he  make  love  ? — 
that's  what  I  want  to  know  !"  to  which  this 
lady  replied,  with  her  incongruous  drollery, 
"  My  dear,  how  can  I  make  out  ?  He's  so 
little  like  Blake !"  But  she  added  that  she 
believed  Fanny  was  intensely  happy.  Lady 
Greyswood  had  been  struck  with  the  girl's 
looking  so,  and  she  rejoiced  to  be  able  to 
declare,  in  perfectly  good  faith,  that  she 
thought  her  greatly  improved.  "  Didn't  I 
tell  you  ?"  returned  Mrs.  Knocker  to  this 
with  a  certain  accent  of  triumph.  It  made 
Lady  Greyswood  nervous,  for  she  took  it  to 
mean  that  Fanny  had  had  a  hint  from  her 
mother  of  Maurice's  possible  intentions. 
She  was  afraid  to  ask  her  old  friend  directly 
if  this  were  definitely  true ;  poor  Fanny's 
improvement  was,  after  all,  not  a  gain  suffi 
cient  to  make  up  for  the  cruelty  that  would 
reside  in  the  sense  of  being  rejected. 

One  day,  in  Queen  Street,  Maurice  said, 
in  an  abrupt,  conscientious  way,  "  You  were 
right  about  Fanny  Knocker  —  she's  a  re 
markably  clever  and  a  thoroughly  nice  girl; 


36  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

a  fellow  can  really  talk  with  her.  But  oh, 
mother !" 

"  Well,  my  dear  ?" 

The  young  man's  face  wore  a  strange 
smile.  "  Oh,  mother !"  he  expressively,  quite 
tragically  repeated.  "But  it's  all  right!" 
he  presently  added,  in  a  different  tone,  and 
Lady  Greyswood  was  reassured.  This  con 
fidence,  however,  received  a  shock  a  little 
later,  on  the  evening  of  a  day  that  had  been 
intensely  hot.  A  torrid  wave  had  passed 
over  London,  and  in  the  suffocating  air  the 
pleasures  of  the  season  had  put  on  a  purple 
face.  Lady  Greyswood,  whose  own  fine 
lowness  of  tone  no  temperature  could  affect, 
knew,  in  her  bedimmed  drawing-room,  ex 
actly  the  detail  of  her  son's  engagements. 
She  pitied  him — she  had  managed  to  keep 
clear ;  she  had  in  particular  a  vision  of  a 
distribution  of  prizes,  by  one  of  the  prin- 
.  cesses,  at  a  big  horticultural  show ;  she  saw 
the  sweltering  starers  (and  at  what,  after 
all  ?)  under  a  huge  glass  roof,  while  there 
passed  before  her,  in  a  blur  of  crimson,  the 
glimpse  of  uncomfortable  cheeks  under  an 
erratic  white  bonnet,  together  also  with  the 


THE   WHEEL   OF    TIME  37 

sense  that  some  of  Jane  Knocker's  ideas  of 
pleasure  were  of  the  oddest  (she  had  such 
lacunes),  and  some  of  the  ordeals  to  which 
she  exposed  poor  Fanny  singularly  ill-chosen. 
Maurice  came  in,  perspiring  but  pale,  (noth 
ing  could  make  him  ugly  !)  to  dress  for  din 
ner;  and  though  he  was  in  a  great  hurry,  he 
found  time  to  pant :  "  Oh,  mother,  what  I'm 
going  through  for  you  !" 

"  Do  you  mean  rushing  about  so — -in  this 
weather?  We  shall  have  a  change  to 
night." 

"  I  hope  so  !  There  are  people  for  whom 
it  doesn't  do  at  all ;  ah,  not  a  bit !"  said 
Maurice,  with  a  laugh  that  she  didn't  fancy. 
But  he  went  up-stairs  before  she  could  think 
of  anything  to  reply,  and  after  he  had  dress 
ed,  he  passed  out  without  speaking  to  her 
again.  The  next  morning,  on  entering  her 
room,  her  maid  mentioned,  as  a  delicate 
duty,  that  Mr.  Glanvil,  whose  door  stood 
wide  open,  and  whose  bed  was  untouched, 
had  apparently  not  yet  come  in.  While, 
however,  her  ladyship  was  in  the  first  fresh 
ness  of  meditation  on  this  singular  fact,  the 
morning's  letters  were  brought  up,  and  as  it 


38  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

happened  that  the  second  envelope  she 
glanced  at  was  addressed  in  Maurice's  hand, 
she  was  quickly  in  possession  of  an  expla 
nation  still  more  startling  than  his  absence. 
He  wrote  from  a  club,  at  nine  o'clock  the 
previous  evening,  to  announce  that  he  was 
taking  the  night  train  for  the  Continent.  He 
hadn't  dressed  for  dinner,  he  had  dressed 
otherwise,  and  having  stuffed  a  few  things 
with  surreptitious  haste  into  a  Gladstone 
bag,  had  slipped  unperceived  out  of  the 
house  and  into  a  hansom.  He  had  sent 
to  Ennismore  Gardens,  from  his  club,  an 
apology — a  request  he  should  not  be  waited 
for;  and  now  he  should  just  have  time  to 
get  to  Charing  Cross.  He  was  off  he  didn't 
know  where,  but  he  was  off  he  did  know 
why.  "  You'll  know  why,  dear  mother,  too, 
I  think,"  this  wonderful  communication  con 
tinued  ;  "  you'll  know  why,  because  I  haven't 
deceived  you.  I've  done  what  I  could,  but 
I've  broken  down.  I  felt  to-day  that  it  was 
no  use  ;  there  was  a  moment,  at  that  beastly 
exhibition,  when  I  saw  it,  when  the  ques 
tion  was  settled.  The  truth  rolled  over  me 
in  a  stifling  wave.  After  that  I  made  up 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 


39 


my  mind  there  was  nothing  to  do  but  to 
bolt.  I  meant  to  put  it  off  till  to-morrow, 
and  to  tell  you  first ;  but  while  I  was  dress 
ing  to-day  it  struck  me  irresistibly  that  my 
true  course  is  to  break  now — never  to  enter 
the  house  or  go  near  her  again.  I  was 
afraid  of  a  scene  with  you  about  this.  I 
haven't  uttered  a  word  of  '  love '  to  her 
(Heaven  save  us  !),  but  my  position  this 
afternoon  became  definitely  false,  and  that 
fact  prescribes  the  course  I  am  taking.  You 
shall  hear  from  me  again  in  a  day  or  two. 
I  have  the  greatest  regard  for  her,  but  I 
can't  bear  to  look  at  her.  I  don't  care  a 
bit  for  money,  but,  hang  it,  I  must  have 
beauty !  Please  send  me  twenty  pounds, 
paste  rest  ante,  Boulogne." 

"What  I  want,  Jane,  is  to  get  at  //«>," 
Lady  Greyswood  said,  later  in  the  day,  with 
an  austerity  that  was  sensible  even  through 
her  tears.  "  Does  the  child  know,  or  doesn't 
she,  what  was  at  stake  ?" 

"  She  hasn't  an  inkling  of  it — how  should 
she  ?  I  recognized  that  it  was  best  not  to 
tell  her— and  I  didn't." 

On  this,  as  Mrs.  Knocker's  tears  had  also 


40  THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME 

flowed,  Lady  Greyswood  kissed  her.  But 
she  didn't  believe  her.  Fanny  herself,  how 
ever,  for  the  rest  of  the  season,  proved 
inscrutable.  "  She's  a  character !"  Lady 
Greyswood  reflected,  with  admiration.  In 
September,  in  Yorkshire,  the  girl  was  taken 
seriously  ill. 


Ill 


AFTER  luncheon  at  the  Crisfords' — the 
big  Sunday  banquets  of  twenty  people  and 
a  dozen  courses — the  men,  lingering  a  little 
in  the  dining-room,  dawdling  among  dis 
placed  chairs  and  dropped  napkins,  while 
the  ladies  rustled  away,  ended  by  shuffling 
in  casual  pairs  up  to  the  studio,  where  coffee 
was  served,  and  where,  presently,  before  the 
cigarettes  were  smoked  out,  Mrs.  Crisford 
always  reappeared  to  usher  in  her  contin 
gent.  The  studio  was  high  and  handsome, 
and  luncheon  at  the  Crisfords'  was,  in  the 
common  esteem,  more  amusing  than  almost 
anything  else  in  London  except  dinner.  It 
was  Bohemia  with  excellent  service — Bo- 


THE    WHEEL   OF    TIME  41 

hernia  not  debtor  but  creditor.  Up-stairs 
the  pictures,  finished  or  nearly  finished,  and 
arranged  in  a  shining  row,  gave  an  obvious 
ness  of  topic,  so  that  conversation  could 
easily  touch  bottom.  Maurice  Glanvil,  who 
had  never  been  in  the  house  before,  looked 
about  and  wondered;  he  was  struck  with 
the  march  of  civilization — the  rise  of  the 
social  tide.  There  were  new  notes  in  Eng 
lish  life,  which  he  caught  quickly  with  his 
fresh  sense ;  during  his  long  absence — 
twenty  years  of  France  and  Italy — all  sorts 
of  things  had  happened.  In  his  youth,  in 
England,  artists  and  authors  and  actors — 
people  of  that  general  kind — were  not  near 
ly  so  "  smart."  Maurice  Glanvil  was  forty- 
nine  to-day,  and  he  thought  a  great  deal  of 
his  youth.  He  regretted  it,  he  missed  it,  he 
tried  to  beckon  it  back  ;  but  the  differences 
in  London  made  him  feel  that  it  had  gone 
forever.  There  might  perhaps  be  some 
sudden  compensation  in  being  fifty,  some 
turn  of  the  dim  telescope,  some  view  from 
the  brow  of  the  hill ;  it  was  a  round,  gross, 
stupid  number,  which  probably  would  make 
one  pompous,  make  one  think  one's  self 


42  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

venerable.  Meanwhile,  at  any  rate,  it  was 
odious  to  be  forty-nine.  Maurice  observed 
the  young  now  more  than  he  had  ever  done ; 
observed  them,  that  is,  as  the  young.  He 
wished  he  could  have  had  a  son,  to  be 
twenty  with  again ;  his  daughter  was  only 
eighteen  ;  but  fond  as  he  was  of  her,  he 
couldn't  live  instinctively  into  her  girlish- 
ness.  It  was  not  that  there  was  not  plenty 
of  it,  for  she  was  simple,  sweet,  indefinite, 
without  the  gifts  that  the  boy  would  have 
had,  the  gifts — what  had  become  of  them 
now  ? — that  he  himself  used  to  have. 

The  youngest  person  present,  before  the 
ladies  came  in,was  the  young  man  who  had  sat 
next  to  Vera,  and  whom,  being  on  the  same 
side  of  the  long  table,  he  had  not  had  under 
his  eye.  Maurice  noticed  him  now,  noticed 
that  he  was  very  good-looking,  fair  and  fresh 
and  clean,  impeccable  in  his  straight  smooth 
ness  ;  also  that,  apparently  knowing  none  of 
the  other  guests  and  moving  by  himself 
about  the  studio  with  visible  interest  in  the 
charming  things,  he  had  the  modesty  of  his 
age  and  of  his  position.  He  had,  however, 
something  more  besides,  which  had  begun 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME  43 

to  prompt  this  observer  to  speak  to  him  in 
order  to  hear  the  sound  of  his  voice — a 
strange,  elusive  resemblance,  lost  in  the  pro 
file,  but  flickering  straight  out  of  the  full 
face,  to  some  one  Maurice  had  known.  For 
a  minute  Glanvil  was  worried  by  it — he  had 
a  sense  that  a  name  would  suddenly  come 
to  him  if  he  should  see  the  lips  in  motion ; 
but  as  he  was  on  the  point  of  laying  the 
ghost  by  an  experiment  Mrs.  Crisford  led 
in  her  companions.  His  daughter  was 
among  them,  and  in  company,  as  he  was 
constantly  anxious  about  her  appearance 
and  her  attitude,  she  had  at  moments  the 
faculty  of  drawing  his  attention  from  every 
thing  else.  The  poor  child,  the  only  fruit 
of  his  odd,  romantic  union,  the  coup  defoudre 
of  his  youth,  with  her  strangely  beautiful 
mother,  whose  own  mother  had  been  a  Rus 
sian,  and  who  had  died  in  giving  birth  to 
her — his  short,  colorless,  insignificant  Vera 
was  excessively,  incorrigibly  plain.  She 
had  been  the  disappointment  of  his  life,  but 
he  greatly  pitied  her.  Her  want  of  beauty, 
with  her  antecedents,  had  been  one  of  the 
strangest  tricks  of  fate  \  she  was  acutely  con- 


44  THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME 

scious  of  it,  and  being  good  and  docile, 
would  have  liked  to  please.  She  did  some 
times,  to  her  father's  delight,  in  spite  of 
everything;  she  had  been  educated  abroad, 
on  foreign  lines,  near  her  mother's  people. 
He  had  brought  her  to  England  to  take  her 
out,  to  do  what  he  could  for  her;  but  he 
was  not  unaware  that  in  England  her  man 
ners,  which  had  been  thought  very  pretty  on 
the  Continent,  would  strike  some  persons 
as  artificial.  They  were  exactly  what  her 
mother's  had  been  ;  they  made  up  to  a  cer 
tain  extent  for  the  want  of  other  resem 
blance.  An  extreme  solicitude,  at  any  rate, 
as  to  the  impression  they  might  make,  was 
the  source  of  his  habit,  in  London,  of  watch 
ing  her  covertly.  He  tried  to  see  at  a  given 
moment  how  she  looked,  if  she  were  happy; 
it  was  always  with  an  intention  of  encourage 
ment,  and  there  was  a  frequent  exchange 
between  them  of  little  invisible  affectionate 
signs.  She  wore  charming  clothes,  but  she 
was  terribly  short ;  in  England  the  girls 
were  gigantic,  and  it  was  only  the  tallest 
who  were  noticed.  Their  manners,  alas, 
had  nothing  to  do  with  it  —  many  of  them 


THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME 


45 


indeed  hadn't  any  manners.  As  soon  as  he 
had  got  near  Vera  he  said  to  her,  scanning 
her  through  his  single  glass  from  head  to 
foot  : 

"Who  is  the  young  man  who  sat  next  you? 
the  one  at  the  other  end  of  the  room." 

"  I  don't  know  his  name,  papa  —  I  didn't 
catch  it." 

"  Was  he  civil — did  he  talk  to  you  ?" 

"Oh,  a  great  deal,  papa — about  all  sorts 
of  things." 

Something  in  the  tone  of  her  voice  made 
him  look  with  greater  intensity  and  even 
with  greater  tenderness  than  usual  into  her 
little  dim  green  eyes. 

"Then you're  all  right — you' re  getting  on?'' 

She  gave  her  effusive  smile — the  one  that 
perhaps  wouldn't  do  in  England.  "Oh, 
beautifully,  papa — every  one's  so  kind." 

She  never  complained,  was  a  brave  little 
optimist,  full  of  sweet  resources ;  but  he  had 
detected  to-day,  as  soon  as  he  looked  at 
her,  the  particular  shade  of  her  content.  It 
made  him  continue,  after  an  hesitation  : 
"  He  didn't  say  anything  about  his  relations 
— anything  that  could  give  you  a  clew  ?" 


46  THE   WHEEL   OF    TIME 

Vera  thought  a  moment.  "  Not  that  I 
can  remember — unless  that  Mr.  Crisford  is 
painting  the  portrait  of  his  mother.  Ah, 
there  it  is!"  the  girl  exclaimed,  looking 
across  the  room  at  a  large  picture  on  an 
easel,  which  the  young  man  had  just  ap 
proached,  and  from  which  their  host  had  re 
moved  the  drapery  that  covered  it.  Mau 
rice  Glanvil  had  observed  this  drapery,  and 
as  the  artist  unveiled  the  canvas  with  a 
flourish  he  saw  that  he  had  been  waiting  for 
the  ladies  to  show  it,  to  produce  a  surprise, 
a  grand  effect.  Every  one  moved  towards 
it,  and  Maurice,  with  his  daughter  beside 
him,  recognized  that  the  production,  a  por 
trait,  was  striking,  a  great  success  for  Cris 
ford — the  figure,  down  to  the  knees,  with  an 
extraordinary  look  of  life,  of  a  tall,  hand 
some  woman  of  middle  age,  in  full  dress,  in 
black.  Yet  he  saw  it  for  the  moment  vaguely, 
through  a  preoccupation,  that  of  a  discovery 
which  he  had  just  made,  and  which  had  re 
called  to  him  an  incident  of  his  youth — his 
juxtaposition,  in  London,  at  a  dinner,  to  a 
girl,  insurmountably  charmless  to  him,  who 
had  fallen  in  love  with  him  (so  that  she  was 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME  47 

nearly  to  die  of  it),  within  the  first  five 
minutes,  before  he  had  even  spoken ;  as  he 
had  subsequently  learned  from  a  communi 
cation  made  him  by  his  poor  mother — a  re 
minder  uttered  with  a  pointless  bitterness 
that  he  had  failed  to  understand,  and  accom 
panied  with  unsuspected  details,  much  later 
— too  late,  long  after  his  marriage  and  shortly 
before  her  death.  He  said  to  himself  that 
he  must  look  out,  and  he  wondered  if  poor 
Vera  would  also  be  insurmountably  charm 
less  to  the  good-looking  young  man.  "  But 
what  a  likeness,  papa — what  a  likeness!" 
he  heard  her  murmur  at  his  elbow  with  sup 
pressed  excitement. 

"  How   can    you   tell,    my   dear,    if   you 
haven't  seen  her  ?" 

"  I  mean  to  the  gentleman — the  son." 
Every  one  was  exclaiming,  "  How  won 
derfully  clever — how  beautiful !"  and  under 
cover  of  the  agitation  and  applause  Maurice 
Glanvil  had  drawn  nearer  the  picture.  The 
movement  had  brought  him  close  to  the 
young  man  of  whom  he  had  been  talking 
with  Vera,  and  who,  with  his  happy  eyes  on 
the  painted  figure,  seemed  to  smile  in  ac- 


48  THE   WHEEL    OF   TIME 

knowledgment  of  the  artist's  talent  and  of 
the  sitter's  charm. 

"  Do  you  know  who  the  lady  is  ?"  Mau 
rice  said  to  him. 

He  turned  his  bright  face  to  his  inter 
locutor.  "  She's  my  mother — Mrs.  Tregent. 
Isn't  it  wonderful  ?" 

His  eyes,  his  lips,  his  voice  flashed  a  light 
into  GlanviPs  uncertainty  —  the  tormenting 
resemblance  was  simply  a  prolonged  echo 
of  Fanny  Knocker,  in  whose  later  name, 
precisely,  he  recognized  the  name  pro 
nounced  by  the  young  man.  Maurice  Glan- 
vil  stared  in  some  bewilderment ;  this  state 
ly,  splendid  lady,  with  a  face  so  vivid  that 
it  was  handsome,  was  what  that  unfortunate 
girl  had  become  ?  The  eyes,  as  if  they 
picked  him  out,  looked  at  him  strangely 
from  the  canvas ;  the  face,  with  all  its  dif 
ference,  asserted  itself,  and  he  felt  himself 
turning  as  red  as  if  he  had  been  in  the  pres 
ence  of  the  original.  Young  Tregent,  pleased 
and  proud,  had  given  way  to  the  pressing 
spectators,  placing  himself  at  Vera's  other 
side;  and  Maurice  heard  the  girl  exclaim 
to  him,  in  one  of  her  pretty  effusions : 


THE   WHEEL    OF   TIME  49 

"  How  beautiful  she  must  be,  and  how 
amiable  !" 

"  She  is  indeed  —  It's  not  a  bit  flattered." 
And  while  Maurice  still  stared,  more  and 
more  mystified  —  for  "flattered,  flattered!" 
was  the  unspoken  solution  in  which  he  had 
instantly  taken  refuge  —  his  neighbor  con 
tinued  :  "  I  wish  you  could  know  her — you 
must ;  she's  delightful.  She  couldn't  come 
here  to-day — they  asked  her ;  she  has  people 
lunching  at  home." 

"I  should  be  so  glad;  perhaps  we  may 
meet  her  somewhere,"  said  Vera. 

"If  I  ask  her,  and  if  you'll  let  her,  I'm  sure 
she'll  come  to  see  you,"  the  young  man  re 
sponded.  Maurice  had  glanced  at  him  while 
the  face  of  the  portrait  watched  them  with 
the  oddest,  the  grimmest  effect.  He  was 
filled  with  a  confusion  of  feelings,  asking 
himself  half  a  dozen  questions  at  once. 
Was  young  Tregent,  with  his  attentive  man 
ner,  "  making  up  "  to  Vera  ?  was  he  going 
out  of  his  way  in  answering  for  his  mother's 
civility  ?  Little  did  he  know  what  he  was 
taking  on  himself !  Above  all,  was  Fanny 
Knocker  to-day  this  extraordinary  figure — 


50  THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME 

extraordinary  in  the  light  of  the  early  plain 
ness  that  had  made  him  bolt  ?  He  became 
conscious  of  an  extreme  curiosity,  an  irresist 
ible  desire  to  see  her. 

"  Oh,  papa,"  said  Vera,  "  Mr.  Tregent's 
so  kind ;  he's  so  good  as  to  promise  us  a 
visit  from  his  mother." 

The  young  man's  friendly  eyes  were  still 
on  the  child's  face.  "  I'll  tell  her  all  about 
you.  Oh,  if  I  ask  her,  she'll  come !"  he  re 
peated. 

"Does  she  do  everything  you  ask  her?" 
the  girl  inquired. 

"  She  likes  to  know  my  friends  !" 

Maurice  hesitated,  wondering  if  he  were 
in  the  presence  of  a  smooth  young  hum 
bug  to  whom  compliments  cost  nothing,  or 
in  that  of  an  impression  really  made — made 
by  his  little,  fluttered,  unpopular  Vera.  He 
had  a  horror  of  exposing  his  child  to  risks, 
but  his  curiosity  was  greater  than  his  cau 
tion.  "  Your  mother  mustn't  come  to  us — 
it's  our  duty  to  go  to  her,"  he  said  to  Mr. 
Tregent ;  "  I  had  the  honor  of  knowing  her 
— a  long  time  ago.  Her  mother  and  mine 
were  intimate  friends.  Be  so  good  as  to  men- 


THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME  51 

tion  my  name  to  her,  that  of  Maurice  Glanvil, 
and  to  tell  her  how  glad  I  have  been  to 
make  your  acquaintance.  And  now,  my 
dear  child,"  he  added,  to  Vera,  "we  must 
take  leave." 

During  the  rest  of  that  day  it  never  oc 
curred  to  him  that  there  might  be  an  awk 
wardness  in  his  presenting  himself,  even  after 
many  years,  before  a  person  with  whom  he 
had  broken  as  he  had  broken  with  Fanny 
Knocker.  This  was  partly  because  he  held, 
justly  enough,  that  he  had  never  committed 
himself,  and  partly  because  the  intensity  of 
his  desire  to  measure  with  his  own  eyes  the 
change  represented  —  misrepresented  per 
haps  —  by  the  picture  was  a  force  greater 
than  any  embarrassment.  His  mother  had 
told  him  that  the  poor  girl  had  cruelly  suffer 
ed,  but  there  was  no  present  intensity  in  that 
idea.  With  her  expensive  portrait,  her  grand 
air,  her  handsome  son,  she  somehow  em 
bodied  success,  whereas  he  himself,  standing 
for  mere  bereavement  and  disappointment, 
was  a  failure  not  to  be  surpassed.  With  Vera 
that  evening  he  was  very  silent;  she  saw 
him  smoke  endless  cigarettes,  and  wondered 


52  THE   WHEEL   OF    TIME 

what  he  was  thinking  of.  She  guessed  in 
deed,  but  she  was  too  subtle  a  little  person 
to  attempt  to  fall  in  with  his  thoughts,  or  to 
be  willing  to  betray  her  own,  by  asking  him 
random  questions  about  Mrs.  Tregent. 
She  had  expressed,  as  they  came  away  from 
their  luncheon-party,  a  natural  surprise  at 
the  coincidence  of  his  having  known  the 
mother  of  her  amusing  neighbor,  but  the 
only  other  words  that  dropped  from  her  on 
the  subject  were  contained  in  a  question 
that,  before  she  went  to  bed,  she  put  to  him 
with  abrupt  gayety,  while  she  carefully 
placed  a  marker  in  a  book  she  had  not  been 
reading. 

"  When  is  it,  then,  that  we're  to  call  upon 
this  wonderful  old  friend  ?" 

He  looked  at  her  through  the  smoke  of 
his  cigarette.  "  I  don't  know.  We  must 
wait  a  little,  to  allow  her  time  to  give  some 
sign." 

"  Oh,  I  see !"  And  Vera  took  leave  of 
him  with  one  of  her  sincere  little  kisses. 


IV 


HE  had  not  long  to  wait  for  the  sign  from 
Mrs.  Tregent ;  it  arrived  the  very  next 
morning  in  the  shape  of  an  invitation  to 
dinner.  This  invitation  was  immediately 
accepted,  but  a  fortnight  was  still  to  inter 
vene — a  trial  to  Maurice  GlanviPs  patience. 
The  promptitude  of  the  demonstration  gave 
him  pleasure — it  showed  him  no  bitterness 
had  survived.  What  place  was  there  in 
deed  for  resentment,  since  she  married  and 
had  given  birth  to  children,  and  thought 
sufficiently  well  of  the  face  God  had  given 
her  to  desire  to  hand  it  on  to  her  posterity  ? 
Her  husband  was  in  Parliament,  or  had 
been — that  came  back  to  him  from  his 
mother's  story.  He  caught  himself  revert 
ing  to  her  with  a  frequency  that  surprised 
him ;  he  was  haunted  by  the  image  of  that 
bright,  strong  woman  on  Crisford's  canvas, 
in  whom  there  was  just  enough  of  Fanny 


54  THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME 

Knocker  to  put  a  sort  of  defiance  into  the 
difference.  He  wanted  to  see  it  again,  and 
his  opportunity  was  at  hand  in  the  form  of 
a  visit  to  Mrs.  Crisford.  He  called  on  this 
lady,  without  his  daughter,  four  days  after 
he  had  lunched  with  her,  and  finding  her 
at  home,  he  presently  led  the  conversation 
to  the  portrait  and  to  his  ardent  desire  for 
another  glimpse  of  it.  Mrs.  Crisford  grati 
fied  this  eagerness — perhaps  he  struck  her 
as  a  possible  sitter.  It  was  late  in  the  after 
noon,  and  her  husband  was  out ;  she  led 
him  into  the  studio.  Mrs.  Tregent,  splen 
did  and  serene,  stood  there  as  if  she  had 
been  watching  for  him.  There  was  no 
doubt  the  picture  was  a  masterpiece. 
Maurice  had  mentioned  that  he  had  known 
the  original  years  before  and  then  had  lost 
sight  of  her.  He  questioned  his  hostess 
with  artful  detachment. 

"  What  sort  of  a  person  has  she  become 
— agreeable,  popular  ?" 

"  Every  one  adores  her  —  she's  so 
clever." 

"  Really — remarkably  ?" 

"Extraordinarily  —  one  of  the  cleverest 


THE    WHEEL   OF   TIME  55 

women  I've  ever  known,  and  quite  one  of 
the  most  charming." 

Maurice  looked  at  the  portrait  —  at  the 
super-subtle  smile  which  seemed  to  tell 
him  Mrs.  Tregent  knew  they  were  talking 
about  her;  a  kind  of  smile  he  had  never 
expected  to  live  to  see  in  Fanny  Knocker's 
eyes.  Then  he  asked :  "  Has  she  literally 
become  as  handsome  as  that  ?" 

Mrs.  Crisford  hesitated.  "  She's  beauti 
ful." 

"  Beautiful  ?"  Maurice  echoed. 

"What  shall  I  say?  It's  a  peculiar 
charm  !  It's  her  spirit.  One  sees  that  her 
life  has  been  beautiful  in  spite  of  her  sor 
rows  !"  Mrs.  Crisford  added. 

"  What  sorrows  has  she  had  ?"  Maurice 
colored  a  little  as  soon  as  he  had  spoken. 

"Oh,  lots  of  deaths.  She  has  lost 
her  husband ;  she  has  lost  several  chil 
dren." 

"Ah,  that's  new  to  me.  Was  her  mar 
riage  happy  ?" 

"  It  must  have  been  for  Mr.  Tregent.  If 
it  wasn't  for  her,  no  one  ever  knew." 

"  But  she  has  a  son,"  said  Maurice. 


56  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

"Yes,  the  only  one — such  a  dear.  She 
thinks  all  the  world  of  him." 

At  this  moment  a  message  was  brought 
to  Mrs.  Crisford,  and  she  asked  to  be  ex 
cused  while  she  went  to  say  a  word  to 
some  one  who  was  waiting.  Maurice  Glan- 
vil  in  this  way  was  left  alone  for  five  min 
utes  with  the  intensity  of  the  presence 
evoked  by  the  artist.  He  found  himself 
agitated,  excited  by  it ;  the  face  of  the  por 
trait  was  so  intelligent  and  conscious  that 
as  he  stood  there  he  felt  as  if  some  strange 
communication  had  taken  place  between 
his  being  and  Mrs.  Tregent's.  The  idea 
made  him  nervous  ;  he  moved  about  the 
room  and  ended  by  turning  his  back.  Mrs. 
Crisford  reappeared,  but  he  soon  took  leave 
of  her ;  and  when  he  had  got  home  (he  had 
settled  himself  in  South  Kensington,  in  a 
little  undiscriminated  house  which  he  had 
hated  from  the  first,)  he  learned  from  his 
daughter  that  she  had  had  a  visit  from  young 
Tregent.  He  had  asked  first  for  Mr.  Glan- 
vil,  and  then,  in  the  second  instance,  for 
herself,  telling  her  when  admitted,  as  if  to 
attenuate  his  possible  indiscretion,  that  his 


THE    WHEEL   OF    TIME 


57 


mother  had  charged  him  to  try  to  see  her, 
even  if  he  should  not  find  her  father.  Vera 
had  never  before  received  a  gentleman  alone, 
and  the  incident  had  left  traces  of  emotion. 
"  Poor  little  thing !"  Maurice  said  to  him 
self  ;  he  always  took  a  melancholy  view  of 
any  happiness  of  his  daughter's,  tending  to 
believe,  in  his  pessimism,  that  it  could  only 
lead  to  some  refinement  of  humiliation. 
He  encouraged  her,  however,  to  talk  about 
young  Tregent,  who,  according  to  her  ac 
count,  had  been  extravagantly  amusing. 
He  had  said,  moreover,  that  his  mother 
was  tremendously  impatient  to  renew  such 
an  old  acquaintance.  "  Why  in  the  world 
doesn't  she,  then  ?"  Maurice  asked  himself ; 
"  why  doesn't  she  come  and  see  Vera  ?'' 
He  reflected  afterwards  that  such  an  expec 
tation  was  unreasonable,  but  it  represented 
at  the  moment  a  kind  of  rebellion  of  his 
conscience.  Then,  as  he  had  begun  to  be 
a  little  ashamed  of  his  curiosity,  he  liked  to 
think  that  Mrs.  Tregent  would  have  quite 
as  much.  On  the  morrow  he  knocked  at 
her  door  —  she  lived  in  a  "  commodious  " 
house  in  Manchester  Square— and  had  the 


58  THE   WHEEL   OF    TIME 

satisfaction,  as  he  had  chosen  his  time  care 
fully,  of  learning  that  she  had  just  come  in. 
Up-stairs,  in  a  high,  quiet,  old-fashioned 
drawing-room,  she  was  before  him.  What 
he  saw  was  a  tall  woman  in  black,  in  her 
bonnet,  with  a  white  face,  smiling  intensely 
— smiling  and  smiling  before  she  spoke. 
He  quickly  perceived  that  she  was  agitated 
and  was  making  an  heroic  effort,  which 
would  presently  be  successful,  not  to  show 
it.  But  it  was  above  all  clear  to  him  that 
she  wasn't  Fanny  Knocker  —  was  simply 
another  person  altogether.  She  had  nothing 
in  common  with  Fanny  Knocker.  It  was 
impossible  to  meet  her  on  the  ground  of 
any  former  acquaintance.  What  acquaint 
ance  had  he  ever  had  with  this  graceful  har 
monious,  expressive  English  matron,  whose 
smile  had  a  singular  radiance  ?  That  rascal 
of  a  Crisford  had  done  her  such  perfect  jus 
tice  that  he  felt  as  if  he  had  before  him  the 
portrait  of  which  the  image  in  the  studio 
had  been  the  original.  There  were,  never 
theless,  things  to  be  said,  and  they  said  them 
on  either  side,  sinking  together,  with  friend 
ly  exclamations  and  exaggerated  laughs,  on 


THE   WHEEL   OF    TIME  59 

the  sofa,  where  her  nearness  seemed  the 
span  of  all  the  distance  that  separated  her 
from  the  past.  The  phrase  that  hummed 
through  everything,  to  his  sense,  was  his  own 
inarticulate  "  How  could  I  have  known  ?  how 
could  I  have  known  ?"  How  could  he  have 
foreseen  that  time  and  life  and  happiness 
(it  was  probably  more  than  anything  happi 
ness)  would  transpose  her  into  such  a  dif 
ferent  key  ?  Her  whole  personality  revealed 
itself  from  moment  to  moment  as  something 
so  agreeable  that  even  after  all  these  years 
he  felt  himself  blushing  for  the  crass  stupid 
ity  of  his  mistake.  Yes,  he  was  turning  red, 
and  she  could  see  it  and  would  know  why ; 
a  perception  that  could  only  constitute  for 
her  a  magnificent  triumph — a  revenge.  All 
his  natural  and  acquired  coolness,  his  ex 
perience  of  life,  his  habit  of  society,  every 
thing  that  contributed  to  make  him  a  man 
of  the  world,  were  of  no  avail  to  cover  his 
confusion.  He  took  refuge  from  it  almost 
angrily  in  trying  to  prove  to  himself  that  she 
had,  on  a  second  look,  a  likeness  to  the  ugly 
girl  he  had  not  thought  good  enough — in 
trying  to  trace  Fanny  Knocker  in  her  fair, 


60  THE   WHEEL    OF    TIME 

ripe  bloom,  the  fine  irregularity  of  her  feat 
ures.  To  put  his  finger  on  the  identity 
would  make  him  feel  better.  Some  of  the 
facts  of  the  girl's  crooked  face  were  still 
there — conventional  beauty  was  absent ;  but 
the  proportions  and  relations  had  changed, 
and  the  expression  and  the  spirit ;  she  had 
accepted  herself  or  ceased  to  care  —  had 
found  oblivion  and  activity  and  appreci 
ation.  What  Maurice  mainly  discovered, 
however,  in  this  intenser  observation  was  an 
attitude  of  hospitality  towards  himself  which 
immediately  effaced  the  presumption  of  "  tri 
umph."  Vulgar  vanity  was  far  from  her, 
and  the  grossness  of  watching  her  effect 
upoji  him  ;  she  was  watching  only  the  lost 
vision  that  had  come  back,  the  joy  that,  if 
for  a  single  hour,  she  had  found  again.  She 
herself  had  no  measure  of  the  alteration 
that  struck  him,  and  there  was  no  sub 
stitution  for  her  in  the  face  that  her  deep 
eyes  seemed  to  brush  with  their  hovering. 
Presently  they  were  talking  like  old  friends, 
and  before  long  each  was  in  possession  of 
the  principal  facts  concerning  the  other. 
Many  things  had  come  and  gone,  and  the 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME  6l 

common  fate  had  pressed  them  hard.  Her 
parents  were  dead,  and  her  husband  and 
her  first-born  children.  He,  on  his  side,  had 
lost  his  mother  and  his  wife.  They  matched 
bereavements  and  compared  bruises,  and  in 
the  way  she  expressed  herself  there  was  a 
charm  which  forced  him,  as  he  wondered, 
to  remember  that  Fanny  Knocker  had  at 
least  been  intelligent. 

"  I  wish  I  could  have  seen  your  wife  — 
you  must  tell  me  all  about  her,"  she  said. 
"  Haven't  you  some  portraits  ?" 

"  Some  poor  little  photographs.  I'll 
show  them  to  you.  She  was  very  pret 
ty  and  very  gentle ;  she  was  also  very 
un  -  English.  But  she  only  lived  a  year. 
She  wasn't  clever  and  accomplished— like 
you." 

"Ah,  me;  you  don't  know  me/" 

"  No,  but  I  want  to — oh,  particularly.  I'm 
prepared  to  give  a  good  deal  of  time  to  the 
study." 

"  We  must  be  friends,"  said  Mrs.  Tregent. 
"  I  shall  take  an  extraordinary  interest  in 
your  daughter." 

"  She'll  be  grateful  for  it.     She's  a  good 


62  THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME 

little  reasonable  thing,  without  a  scrap  of 
beauty." 

"You  care  greatly  for  that,"  said  Mrs. 
Tregent. 

He  hesitated.     "  Dont  you  ?" 

She  smiled  at  him  with  her  basking  can 
dor.  "  I  used  to.  That's  my  husband,"  she 
added,  with  an  odd,  though  evidently  ac 
cidental  inconsequence.  She  had  reached 
out  to  a  table  for  a  photograph  in  a  silver 
frame.  "He  was  very  good  to  me." 

Maurice  saw  that  Mr.  Tregent  had  been 
many  years  older  than  his  wife — a  prosper 
ous,  prosaic,  parliamentary  person  whom 
she  couldn't  impose  on  a  man  of  the  world. 
He  sat  an  hour,  and  they  talked  of  the  mu 
tilated  season  of  their  youth  ;  he  wondered 
at  the  things  she  remembered.  In  this  little 
hour  he  felt  his  situation  change  —  some 
thing  strange  and  important  take  place ;  he 
seemed  to  see  why  he  had  come  back  to 
England.  But  there  was  an  implication  that 
worried  him — it  was  in  the  very  air,  a  rever 
beration  of  that  old  assurance  of  his  mother's. 
He  wished  to  clear  the  question  up  —  it 
would  matter  for  the  beginning  of  a  new 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME  63 

friendship.  Had  she  had  any  sense  of  injury 
when  he  took  to  his  heels,  any  glimpse  of 
the  understanding  on  which  he  had  begun 
to  come  to  Ennismore  Gardens  ?  He  couldn't 
find  out  to-day  except  by  asking  her,  which, 
at  their  time  of  life,  after  so  many  years  and 
consolations,  would  be  legitimate  and  even 
amusing.  When  he  took  leave  of  her  he 
held  her  hand  a  moment,  hesitating;  then 
he  brought  out : 

"  Did  they  ever  tell  you — a  hundred  years 
ago — that  between  your  mother  and  mine 
there  was  a  great  question  of  our  marry 
ing?" 

She  stared  —  she  broke  into  a  laugh. 
"  Was  there  ?" 

"  Did  you  ever  know  it  ?  Did  you  ever 
suspect  it?" 

She  hesitated,  and  for  the  first  time  since 
he  had  been  in  the  room  ceased  for  an  in 
stant  to  look  straight  at  him.  She  only  an 
swered,  still  laughing  however,  "  Poor  dears 
— they  were  altogether  too  deep  !" 

She  evidently  wished  to  convey  that  she 
had  never  known.  Maurice  was  a  little  dis 
appointed  ;  at  present  he  would  have  pre- 


64  THE   WHEEL    OF    TIME 

ferred  her  knowledge.  But  as  he  walked 
home  across  the  park,  through  Kensington 
Gardens,  he  felt  it  impossible  to  believe  in 
her  ignorance. 


AT  the  end  of  a  month  he  broke  out  to 
her.  "  I  can't  get  over  it,  it's  so  extraordi 
nary — the  difference  between  your  youth 
and  your  maturity !" 

"  Did  you  expect  me  to  be  an  eternal 
child  ?"  Mrs.  Tregent  asked,  composedly. 

"No,  it  isn't  that."  He  stopped  —  it 
would  be  difficult  to  explain. 

"  What  is  it,  then  ?"  she  inquired,  with 
her  systematic  refusal  to  acknowledge  a 
complication.  There  was  always,  to  Mau 
rice  Glanvil's  ear,  in  her  impenetrability 
to  allusion,  the  faintest,  softest  glee,  and 
it  gave  her  on  this  occasion  the  appear 
ance  of  recognizing  his  difficulty  and  being 
amused  at  it.  She  would  be  excusable  to 
be  a  little  cold-blooded.  He  really  knew, 
however,  that  the  penalty  was  all  in  his  own 
reflections,  for  it  had  not  taken  him  even  a 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME  65 

month  to  perceive  that  she  was  supremely, 
almost  strangely  indulgent.  There  was  noth 
ing  he  was  ready  to  say  that  she  might  not 
hear,  and  her  absence  of  coquetry  was  a  re 
markable  rest  to  him. 

"  It  isn't  what  I  expected — it's  what  I 
didn't  expect.  To  say  exactly  what  I  mean, 
it's  the  way  you've  improved." 

"  I've  improved  ?     I'm  so  glad  !" 

"  Surely  you've  been  aware  of  it — you've 
been  conscious  of  the  transformation." 

"  As  an  improvement  ?  I  don't  know. 
I've  been  conscious  of  changes  enough — of 
all  the  stages  and  strains  and  lessons  of 
life.  I've  been  aware  of  growing  old,  and 
I  hold,  in  dissent  from  the  usual  belief,  that 
there's  no  fool  like  a  young  fool.  One  is 
never,  I  suppose,  such  a  fool  as  one  has 
been,  and  that  may  count,  perhaps,  as  amel 
ioration.  But  I  can't  flatter  myself  that 
I've  had  two  different  identities.  I've  had 
to  make  one,  such  as  it  is,  do  for  everything. 
I  think  I've  been  happier  than  I  originally 
supposed  I  should  be — and  yet  I  had  my 
happiness,  too,  as  a  girl.  At  all  events,  if 
you  were  to  scratch  me,  as  they  say,  you'd 


66  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

still  find — "  She  paused  a  moment,  and 
he  really  hung  upon  her  lips  ;  there  was 
such  a  charm  of  tone  in  whatever  she  said. 
"  You'd  still  find,  underneath,  the  blowzy 
girl — "  With  this  she  again  checked  her 
self  and,  slightly  to  his  surprise,  gave  a 
nervous  laugh. 

"  The  blowzy  girl  ?"  he  repeated,  with  an 
artlessness  of  interrogation  that  made  her 
laugh  again. 

"  Whom  you  went  with  that  hot  day  to 
see  the  princess  give  the  prizes." 

"Oh  yes  —  that  dreadful  day!"  he  an 
swered,  gravely,  musingly,  with  the  whole 
scene  pictured  by  her  words,  and  without 
contesting  the  manner  in  which  she  quali 
fied  herself.  It  was  the  nearest  allusion 
that  had  passed  between  them  to  that  crud 
est  conception  of  his  boyhood,  his  flight 
from  Ennismore  Gardens.  Almost  every 
day  for  a  month  he  had  come  to  see  her, 
and  they  had  talked  of  a  thousand  things ; 
never  yet,  however,  had  they  made  any  ex 
plicit  mention  of  this  remote  instance  of 
premature  wisdom.  Moreover,  if  he  now 
felt  the  need  of  going  back,  it  was  not  to 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME  67 

be  apologetic,  to  do  penance ;  he  had  noth 
ing  to  explain,  for  his  behavior,  as  he  con 
sidered  it,  still  struck  him,  given  the  cir 
cumstances,  as  natural.  It  was  to  himself 
indeed  that  explanations  were  owing,  for 
he  had  been  the  one  who  had  been  most 
deceived.  He  liked  Mrs.  Tregent  better 
than  he  had  ever  liked  a  woman — that  is, 
he  liked  her  for  more  reasons.  He  had 
liked  his  poor  little  wife  only  for  one,  which 
was,  after  all,  no  reason  at  all :  he  had  been 
in  love  with  her.  In  spite  of  the  charm  that 
the  renewal  of  acquaintance  with  his  old 
friend  had  so  unexpectedly  added  to  his 
life,  there  was  a  vague  torment  in  his  rela 
tion  with  her,  the  sense  of  a  revenge  (oh,  a 
very  kind  one  !)  to  take,  a  haunting  idea 
that  he  couldn't  pacify.  He  could  still  feel 
sore  at  the  trick  that  had  been  played  him. 
Even  after  a  month  the  curiosity  with  which 
he  had  approached  her  was  not  assuaged ; 
in  a  manner  indeed  it  had  only  borrowed 
force  from  all  she  had  insisted  on  doing  for 
him.  She  was  literally  doing  everything 
now  ;  gently,  gayly,  with  a  touch  so  familiar 
that  protestations  on  his  part  would  have 


68  THE   WHEEL    OF   TIME 

been  pedantic,  she  had  taken  his  life  in 
hand.  Rich  as  she  was,  she  had  known  how 
to  give  him  lessons  in  economy ;  she  had 
taught  him  how  to  manage  in  London  on 
his  means.  A  month  ago  his  servants  had 
been  horrid  ;  to-day  they  were  the  best  he 
had  ever  known.  For  Vera  she  was  plainly 
a  providence ;  her  behavior  to  Vera  was 
transcendent. 

He  had  privately  made  up  his  mind  that 
Vera  had  in  truth  had  her  coup  defoudre — 
that  if  she  had  had  a  chance  she  would 
have  laid  down  her  little  life  for  Arthur 
Tregent;  yet  two  circumstances,  he  could 
perceive,  had  helped  to  postpone,  to  atten 
uate  even  somewhat,  her  full  consciousness 
of  what  had  befallen  her.  One  of  these  in 
fluences  had  been  the  prompt  departure  of 
the  young  man  from  London ;  the  other 
was  simply  the  diversion  produced  by  Mrs. 
Tregent's  encompassing  art.  It  had  had 
immediate  consequences  for  the  child  ;  it 
was  like  a  drama  in  perpetual  climaxes. 
This  surprising  benefactress  rejoiced  in  her 
society,  took  her  "  out,"  treated  her  as  if 
there  were  mysterious  injustices  to  repair. 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME  69 

Vera  was  agitated  not  a  little  by  such  a 
change  in  her  life  ;  she  had  English  kindred 
enough,  uncles  and  aunts  and  cousins  ;  but 
she  had  felt  herself  lost  in  her  father's  fam 
ily,  and  was  principally  aware,  among  them, 
of  their  strangeness  and  their  indifference. 
They  affected  her  mainly  as  mere  number 
and  stature.  Mrs.  Tregent's  was  a  perform 
ance  unpromised  and  uninterrupted,  and 
the  girl  desired  to  know  if  all  English  peo 
ple  took  so  generous  a  view  of  friendship. 
Maurice  laughed  at  this  question  and,  with 
out  meeting  his  daughter's  eyes,  answered  in 
the  negative.  Vera  guessed  so  many  things 
that  he  didn't  know  what  she  would  be 
guessing  next.  He  saw  her  caught  up  to 
the  blue  like  Ganymede,  and  surrendered 
her  contentedly.  She  had  been  the  occu 
pation  of  his  life,  yet  to  Mrs.  Tregent  he 
was  willing  to  part  with  her ;  this  lady  was 
the  only  person  of  whom  he  would  not  have 
been  jealous.  Even  in  the  young  man's 
absence,  moreover,  Vera  lived  with  the  son 
of  the  house  and  breathed  his  air ;  Man 
chester  Square  was  full  of  him,  his  photo 
graph  was  on  every  table.  How  often  she 


70  THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME 

spoke  of  him  to  his  mother  Maurice  had  no 
means  of  knowing,  nor  whether  Mrs.  Tre- 
gent  encouraged  such  a  topic ;  he  had  rea 
son  to  believe  indeed  that  there  were  re 
serves  on  either  side,  and  he  felt  that  he 
could  trust  his  old  friend's  prudence  as 
much  as  her  liberality.  The  attitude  of  for 
bearance  from  rash  allusions,  which  was 
Maurice's  own,  could  not  at  any  rate  keep 
Arthur  from  being  a  presence  in  the  little 
drama  which  had  begun  for  them  all,  as  the 
older  man  was  more  and  more  to  recognize 
with  nervous  prefigurements  on  that  occa 
sion  at  the  Crisford's. 

Arthur  Tregent  had  gone  to  Ireland  to 
spend  a  few  weeks  with  an  old  university 
friend  —  the  gentleman,  indeed,  at  Cam 
bridge,  had  been  his  tutor — who  had  lately, 
in  a  district  classified  as  "  disturbed,"  come 
into  a  bewildering  heritage.  He  had  chosen, 
in  short,  for  a  study  of  the  agrarian  ques 
tion  on  the  spot  the  moment  of  the  year 
when  London  was  most  absorbing.  Maurice 
Glanvil  made  no  remark  to  his  mother  on 
this  anomaly,  and  she  offered  him  no  ex 
planation  of  it ;  they  talked  in  fact  of  al- 


THE   WHEEL   OF    TIME  71 

most  everything  except  Arthur.  Mrs.  Tre- 
gent  had  to  her  constant  visitor  the  air  of 
feeling  that  she  owed  him  in  relation  to  her 
son  an  apology  which  she  had  not  the  ma 
terials  for  making.  It  was  certainly  a  high 
standard  of  courtesy  that  would  suggest  to 
her  that  he  ought  to  have  put  himself  out 
for  these  social  specimens  ;  but  it  was  ob 
vious  that  her  standard  was  high.  Maurice 
Glanvil  smiled  when  he  thought  to  what 
bare  civility  the  young  man  would  have 
deemed  himself  held  had  he  known  of  a 
certain  passage  of  private  history.  But  he 
knew  nothing — Maurice  was  sure  of  that ; 
his  reason  for  going  away  had  been  quite 
another  matter.  That  Vera's  brooding  pa 
rent  should  have  had  such  an  insight  into 
the  young  man's  motives  is  a  proof  of  the 
amount  of  reflection  that  he  devoted  to 
him.  He  had  not  seen  much  of  him,  and, 
in  truth,  he  found  him  provoking ;  but  he 
was  haunted  by  the  odd  analogy  of  which 
he  had  had  a  glimpse  on  their  first  en 
counter.  The  late  Mr.  Tregent  had  had 
"  interests  in  the  north,"  and  the  care  of 
them  had  naturally  devolved  upon  his  son, 


72  THE    WHEEL   OF    TIME 

who,  by  the  mother's  account,  had  shown 
an  admirable  capacity  for  business.  The 
late  Mr.  Tregent  had  also  been  actively  po 
litical,  and  it  was  fondly  hoped,  in  Man 
chester  Square  at  least,  that  the  day  was 
not  distant  when  his  heir  would,  in  turn,  and 
as  a  representative  of  the  same  respectabil 
ities,  speak  reported  words  in  debate.  Mau 
rice  himself,  vague  about  the  House  of 
Commons,  had  nothing  to  say  against  his 
making  a  figure  there.  Accordingly,  if  these 
natural  gifts  continued  to  remind  him  of 
his  own  fastidiously  clever  youth,  it  was 
with  the  difference  that  Arthur  Tregent's 
cleverness  struck  him  as  much  the  greater 
of  the  two.  If  the  changes  in  England 
were  marked,  this  indeed  was  in  general 
one  of  them,  that  the  sharp  young  men 
were  still  sharper  than  of  yore.  When  they 
had  ability,  at  any  rate  they  showed  it  all ; 
Maurice  would  never  have  pretended  that 
he  had  shown  all  his.  He  had  not  cared 
whether  any  one  knew  it.  It  was  not  how 
ever  this  superior  intensity  which  provoked 
him,  and  poor  young  Tregent  could  not  be 
held  responsible  for  his  irritation.  If  the 


THE   WHEEL    OF    TIME  73 

circumstance  in  which  they  most  resembled 
each  other  was  the  disposition  to  escape 
from  plain  girls  who  aspired  to  them,  such 
a  characteristic,  as  embodied  in  the  object 
of  Vera's  admiration,  was  purely  interesting, 
was  even  amusing,  to  Vera's  father ;  but  it 
would  have  gratified  him  to  be  able  to  as 
certain  from  Mrs.  Tregent  whether,  to  her 
knowledge,  her  son  thought  his  child  really 
repulsive,  and  what  annoyed  him  was  the 
fact  that  such  an  inquiry  was  practically 
impossible.  Arthur  was  provoking,  in  short, 
because  he  had  an  advantage — an  advan 
tage  residing  in  the  fact  that  his  mother's 
friend  couldn't  ask  questions  about  him 
without  appearing  to  indulge  in  hints  and 
overtures.  The  idea  of  this  officiousness 
was  odious  to  Maurice  Glanvil ;  so  that  he 
confined  himself  to  meditating  in  silence  on 
the  happiness  it  would  be  for  poor  Vera  to 
marry  a  beautiful  young  man  with  a  fortune 
and  a  future. 

Though  the  opportunity  for  this  recre 
ation — it  engaged  much  of  his  time — should 
be  counted  as  one  of  the  pleasant  results 
of  his  intimacy  with  Mrs.  Tregent,  yet 


74  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

the  sense,  perverse  enough,  that  he  had  a 
ground  of  complaint  against  her  subsisted 
even  to  the  point  of  finally  steadying  him 
while  he  expressed  his  grievance.  This 
happened  in  the  course  of  one  of  those 
afternoon  hours  that  had  now  become  in 
dispensable  to  him  —  hours  of  belated  tea 
and  egotistical  talk  in  the  long  summer 
light  and  the  chastened  roar  of  London. 

"  No,  it  wasn't  fair,"  he  said  ;  "  and  I 
wasn't  well  used  —  a  hundred  years  ago. 
I'm  sore  about  it  now ;  you  ought  to  have 
notified  me,  to  have  instructed  me.  Why 
didn't  you,  in  common  honesty?  Why  didn't 
my  poor  mother,  who  was  so  eager  and 
shrewd  ?  Why  didn't  yours  ?  She  used  to 
talk  to  me.  Heaven  forgive  me  for  saying 
it,  but  our  mothers  weren't  up  to  the  mark ! 
You  may  tell  me  they  didn't  know;  to  which 
I  reply  that  mine  was  universally  supposed, 
and  by  me  in  particular,  to  know  everything 
that  could  be  known.  No,  it  wasn't  well 
managed,  and  the  consequence  has  been 
this  odious  discovery,  an  awful  shock  to 
a  man  of  my  time  of  life,  and  under  the 
effect  of  which  I  now  speak  to  you,  that 


THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 


75 


for  a  quarter  of  a  century  I've  been  a 
fool." 

"What would  you  have  wished  us  to  do?" 
Mrs.Tregent  asked,  as  she  gave  him  another 
cup  of  tea. 

"  Why,  to  have  said,  '  Wait,  wait — at  any 
price;  have  patience  and  hold  on  !'  They 
ought  to  have  told  me,  you  ought  to  have 
told  me,  that  your  conditions  at  that  time 
were  a  temporary  phase,  and  that  you  would 
infallibly  break  your  shell.  You  ought  to 
have  warned  me,  they  ought  to  have  warned 
me,  that  there  would  be  wizardry  in  the  case, 
that  you  were  to  be  the  subject,  at  a  given 
moment,  of  a  transformation  absolutely  mi 
raculous.  I  couldn't  know  it  by  inspiration; 
I  measured  you  by  the  common  law — how 
could  I  do  anything  else  ?  But  it  wasn't 
kind  to  leave  me  in  error." 

Maurice  Glanvil  treated  himself  without 
scruple  to  this  fine  ironic  flight,  this  soph 
istry  which  eased  his  nerves,  because  though 
it  brought  him  nearer  than  he  had  yet  come 
to  putting  his  finger,  visibly  to  Mrs.  Tregent, 
on  the  fact  that  he  had  once  tried  to  believe 
he  could  marry  her  and  had  found  her  too 


76  THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME 

ugly,  their  present  relation  was  so  extraor 
dinary  and  his  present  appreciation  so  lib 
eral  as  to  make  almost  any  freedom  excus 
able,  especially  as  his  companion  had  the 
advantage  of  being  to  all  intents  and  pur 
poses  a  different  person  from  the  one  he 
talked  of,  while  he  suffered  the  ignominy  of 
being  the  same. 

"There  has  been  no  miracle,"  said  Mrs. 
Tregent,  after  a  moment.  "  I Ve  never  known 
anything  but  the  common,  ah,  the  very  com 
mon  law,  and  anything  that  I  may  have 
become  only  the  common  things  have  made 
me." 

He  shook  his  head.  "  You  wore  a  dis 
figuring  mask,  a  veil,  a  disguise.  One  fine 
day  you  dropped  them  all  and  showed  the 
world  the  real  creature." 

"  It  wasn't  one  fine  day — it  was  little  by 
little." 

"  Well,  one  fine  day  I  saw  the  result ;  the 
process  doesn't  matter.  To  arrive  at  a  goal 
invisible  from  the  starting-point  is  no  doubt 
an  incident  in  the  life  of  a  certain  number 
of  women.  But  what  is  absolutely  unprece 
dented  is  to  have  traversed  such  a  distance." 


THE   WHEEL   OF    TIME 


77 


"  Hadn't  I  a  single  redeeming  point  ?" 
Mrs.  Tregent  demanded. 

He  hesitated  a  little,  and  while  he  hesi 
tated  she  looked  at  him.  Her  look  was  but 
of  an  instant,  but  it  told  him  everything; 
told  him,  in  one  misty  moonbeam,  all  she 
had  known  of  old.  She  had  known  per 
fectly —  she  had  been  as  conscious  of  the 
conditions  of  his  experiment  as  of  the  in 
vincibility  of  his  repugnance.  Whether  her 
mother  had  betrayed  him  didn't  matter ; 
she  had  read  everything  clear  and  had  had 
to  accept  the  cruel  truth.  He  was  touched 
as  he  had  never  been  by  that  moment's 
communication  ,  he  was,  unexpectedly,  al 
most  awe -struck,  for  there  was  something 
still  more  in  it  than  he  had  guessed.  "  I 
was  letting  my  fancy  play  just  now,"  he  an 
swered,  apologetically.  "  It  was  I  who  was 
wanting — it  was  I  who  was  the  idiot !" 

"  Don't  say  that.  You  were  so  kind." 
And  hereupon  Mrs.  Tregent  startled  her 
visitor  by  bursting  into  tears. 

She  recovered  herself  indeed,  and  they 
forbore,  on  that  occasion,  in  the  interest  of 
the  decorum  expected  of  persons  of  their 


78  THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME 

age  and  in  their  circumstances,  to  rake  over 
these  smouldering  ashes  ;  but  such  a  con 
versation  had  made  a  difference,  and  from 
that  day  onward  Maurice  Glanvil  was  awake 
to  the  fact  that  he  had  been  the  passion  of 
this  extraordinary  woman's  life.  He  felt 
humiliated  for  an  hour,  but  after  that  his 
pleasure  was  almost  as  great  as  his  wonder. 
For  wonder  there  was  plenty  of  room,  but 
little  by  little  he  saw  how  things  had  come  to 
pass.  She  was  not  subjected  to  the  ordeal 
of  telling  him,  or  to  the  abasement  of  any 
confession,  but  day  by  day  he  sounded,  with 
a  purity  of  gratitude  that  renewed,  in  his 
spirit,  the  sources  of  youth,  the  depths  of 
everything  that  her  behavior  implied.  Of 
such  a  studied  tenderness  as  she  showed 
him  the  roots  could  only  be  in  some  un 
speakably  sacred  past.  She  had  not  to  ex 
plain,  she  had  not  to  clear  up  inconsisten 
cies,  she  had  only  to  let  him  be  with  her. 
She  had  striven,  she  had  accepted,  she  had 
conformed  ;  but  she  had  thought  of  him 
every  day  of  her  life.  She  had  taken  up 
duties  and  performed  them,  she  had  ban 
ished  every  weakness  and  practised  every 


THE   WHEEL    OF   TIME  79 

virtue  ;  but  the  still,  hidden  flame  had  never 
been  quenched.  His  image  had  interposed, 
his  reality  had  remained,  and  she  had  never 
denied  herself  the  sweetness  of  hoping  that 
she  should  see  him  again  and  that  she 
should  know  him.  She  had  never  raised  a 
little  finger  for  it,  but  fortune  had  answered 
her  prayer.  Women  were  capable  of  these 
mysteries  of  sentiment,  these  intensities  of 
fidelity,  and  there  were  moments  in  which 
Maurice  Glanvil's  heart  beat  strangely  be 
fore  a  vision  really  so  sublime.  He  seemed 
to  understand  now  by  what  miracle  Fanny 
Knocker  had  been  beautified — the  miracle 
of  heroic  docilities  and  accepted  pangs  and 
vanquished  egotisms.  It  had  never -come 
in  a  night,  but  it  had  come  by  living  for 
others.  She  was  living  for  others  still ;  it 
was  impossible  for  him  to  see  anything  else 
at  last  than  that  she  was  living  for  him. 
The  time  of  passion  was  over,  but  the  time 
of  service  was  long.  When  all  this  became 
vivid  to  him  he  felt  that  he  couldn't  recog 
nize  it  enough,  and  yet  that  recognition 
might  only  be  tacit  and,  as  it  were,  cir 
cuitous.  He  couldn't  say  to  her,  even  hu- 


80  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

morously,  "  It's  very  kind  of  you  to  be  in 
love  with  such  a  donkey,"  for  these  words 
would  have  implied  somehow  that  he  had 
rights  —  an  attitude  from  which  his  reno 
vated  delicacy  shrank.  He  bowed  his  head 
before  such  charity,  and  seemed  to  see 
moreover  that  Mrs.  Tregent's  desire  to  be 
friend  him  was  a  feeling  independent  of  any 
prospect  of  gain  and  indifferent  to  any 
chance  of  reward.  It  would  be  described 
vulgarly,  after  so  much  had  come  and  gone, 
as  the  state  of  being  "  in  love  " — the  state 
of  the  instinctive  and  the  simple,  which  they 
both  had  left  far  behind  ;  so  that  there  was 
a  certain  sort  of  reciprocity  which  would 
almost  constitute  an  insult  to  it. 


VI 


HE  soared  on  these  high  thoughts  till, 
towards  the  end  of  July  (Mrs.  Tregent  stayed 
late  in  town — she  was  awaiting  her  son's 
return),  he  made  the  discovery  that  to  some 
persons,  perhaps  indeed  to  many,  he  had 
all  the  air  of  being  in  love.  This  image 


THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME  8 1 

was  flashed  back  to  him  from  the  irreverent 
lips  of  a  lady  who  knew  and  admired  Mrs. 
Tregent,  and  who  professed  amusement  at 
his  surprise,  at  his  artless  declaration  that  he 
had  no  idea  he  had  made  himself  conspicu 
ous.  She  assured  him  that  every  one  was 
talking  about  him — though  people  after  all 
had  a  tenderness  for  elderly  romance ;  and 
she  left  him  divided  between  the  acute 
sense  that  he  was  comical  (he  had  a  horror 
of  that)  and  the  pale  perception  of  some 
thing  that  he  could  "  help  "  still  less.  At 
the  end  of  a  few  hours  of  reflection  he  had 
sacrificed  the  penalty  to  the  privilege ,  he 
was  about  to  be  fifty,  and  he  knew  Fanny 
Knocker's  age — no  one  better ,  but  he  cared 
no  straw  for  vulgar  judgments,  and  more 
over  could  think  of  plenty  of  examples  of 
unions  admired  even  after  longer  delays. 
For  three  days  he  enjoyed  the  luxury  of  ad 
mitting  to  himself  without  reserve  how  in 
dispensable  she  had  become  to  him ;  as  the 
third  drew  to  a  close  he  was  more  nervous 
than  really  he  had  ever  been  in  his  life,  for 
this  was  the  evening  on  which,  after  many 
hinderances,  Mrs.  Tregent  had  agreed  to 


82  THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME 

dine  with  him.  He  had  planned  the  oc 
casion  for  a  month  —  he  wanted  to  show 
her  how  well  he  had  learned  from  her  how 
to  live  on  his  income.  Her  occupations 
had  always  interposed  —  she  was  teaching 
him  new  lessons ;  but  at  last  she  gave  him 
the  joy  of  sitting  at  his  table.  At  the 
evening's  end  he  begged  her  to  remain 
after  the  others,  and  he  asked  one  of  the 
ladies  who  had  been  present,  and  who  was 
going  to  a  pair  of  parties,  to  be  so  good  as 
to  take  Vera  away.  This,  indeed,  had  been 
arranged  in  advance,  and  when,  in  the  dis 
composed  drawing-room,  of  which  the  win 
dows  stood  open  to  the  summer  night,  he 
was  alone  with  his  old  friend,  he  saw  in  her 
face  that  she  knew  it  had  been  arranged. 
He  saw  more  than  this  —  that  she  knew 
what  he  was  waiting  to  say,  and  that  if,  after 
a  visible  reluctance,  she  had  consented  to 
come,  it  was  in  order  to  meet  him,  with 
whatever  effort,  on  the  ground  he  had  chosen 
— meet  him  once,  and  then  leave  it  forever. 
This  was  why,  without  interrupting  him,  but 
before  he  had  finished,  putting  out  her  hand 
to  his  own,  with  a  strange  clasp  of  refusal, 


THE   WHEEL   OF    TIME  83 

she  was  ready  to  show  him,  in  a  woful  but 
beautiful  headshake  to  which  nothing  could 
add,  that  it  was  impossible  at  this  time  of 
day  for  them  to  marry.  She  stayed  only  a 
moment,  but  in  that  moment  he  had  to  ac 
cept  the  knowledge  that  by  as  much  as  it 
might  have  been  of  old,  by  so  much  might 
it  never  be  again.  After  she  had  gone  he 
walked  up  and  down  the  drawing-room  half 
the  night.  He  sent  the  servants  to  bed,  he 
blew  out  the  candles ;  the  forsaken  place 
was  lighted  only  by  the  lamps  in  the  street. 
He  gave  himself  the  motive  of  waiting  for 
Vera  to  come  back,  but  in  reality  he  threshed 
about  in  the  darkness  because  his  cheeks 
had  begun  to  burn.  There  was  a  sting  for 
him  in  Mrs.  Tregent's  refusal,  and  this  sting 
was  sharper  even  than  the  disappointment 
of  his  desire.  It  was  a  reproach  to  his  deli 
cacy  ;  it  made  him  feel  as  if  he  had  been  an 
ass  for  the  second  time.  When  she  was 
young  and  free  his  faith  had  been  too  poor 
and  his  perceptions  too  dense ;  he  had 
waited  to  show  her  that  he  only  bargained 
for  certainties  and  only  recognized  success. 
He  dropped  into  a  chair  at  last  and  sat 


84  THE    WHEEL   OF    TIME 

there  a  long  time,  his  elbows  on  his  knees, 
his  face  in  his  hands,  trying  to  cover  up  his 
humiliation,  waiting  for  it  to  ebb.  As  the 
sounds  of  the  night  died  away,  it  began  to 
come  back  to  him  that  she  had  given  him 
a  promise  to  which  a  rich  meaning  could  be 
attached.  What  was  it  that,  before  going 
away,  she  had  said  about  Vera.  in  words  he 
had  been  at  the  moment  too  disconcerted  to 
take  in  ?  Little  by  little  he  reconstructed 
these  words  with  comfort ;  finally,  when  after 
hearing  a  carriage  stop  at  the  door  he 
hastily  pulled  himself  together  and  went 
down  to  admit  his  daughter,  the  sight  of 
the  child  on  his  threshold,  as  the  brougham 
that  had  restored  her  drove  away,  brought 
them  all  back  in  their  generosity. 
"  Have  you  danced  ?"  he  asked. 
She  hesitated'.  "  A  little,  papa." 
He  knew  what  that  meant  —  she  had 
danced  once.  He  followed  her  up-stairs  in 
silence ;  she  had  not  wasted  her  time — she 
had  had  her  humiliation.  Ah,  clearly  she  was 
too  short !  Yet  on  the  landing  above,  where 
her  bedroom  candle  stood,  she  tried  to  be 
gay  with  him,  asking  him  about  his  own 


THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME  85 

party,  and  whether  the  people  had  stayed 
late. 

"  Mrs.  Tregent  stayed  after  the  others. 
She  spoke  very  kindly  of  you." 

The  girl  looked  at  her  father  with  an 
anxiety  that  showed  through  her  smile. 
"What  did  she  say?" 

He  hesitated,  as  Vera  had  done  a  mo 
ment  before.  "  That  you  must  be  our  com 
pensation." 

His  daughter's  eyes,  still  wondering,  turn 
ed  away.  "  What  did  she  mean  ?" 

"That  it's  all  right,  darling!"  And 
he  supplied  the  deficiencies  of  this  ex 
planation  with  a  long  kiss  for  good 
night. 

The  next  day  he  went  to  see  Mrs.  Tre 
gent,  who  wore  the  air  of  being  glad  to 
have  something  at  once  positive  and  pleas 
ant  to  say.  She  announced  immediately 
that  Arthur  was  coming  back. 

"  I  congratulate  you."  Then,  as  they  ex 
changed  one  of  their  looks  of  unreserved 
recognition,  Maurice  added  :  "  Now  it's  for 
Vera  and  me  to  go." 

"  To  go  ?" 


86  THE    WHEEL    OF   TIME 

"  Without  more  delay.  It's  high  time  we 
should  take  ourselves  off." 

Mrs.  Tregent  was  silent  a  moment. 
"  Where  shall  you  go  ?" 

"  To  our  old  haunts — abroad.  We  must 
see  some  of  our  old  friends.  We  shall  spend 
six  months  away." 

"  Then  what  becomes  of  my  months  ?" 

"  Your  months  ?" 

"Those  it's  all  arranged  she's  to  spend 
at  Blankley."  Blankley  was  Mrs.  Tregent's 
house  in  Derbyshire,  and  she  laughed  as 
she  went  on  :  "  Those  that  I  spoke  of  last 
evening.  Don't  look  as  if  we  had  never 
discussed  it  and  settled  it !" 

"  What  shall  I  do  without  her  ?"  Maurice 
Glanvil  presently  demanded. 

"  What  will  you  do  with  her?"  his  hostess 
replied,  with  a  world  of  triumphant  mean 
ing.  He  was  not  prepared  to  say,  in  the 
sense  of  her  question,  and  he  took  refuge 
in  remarking  that  he  noted  her  avoidance 
of  any  suggestion  that  he,  too,  would  be  wel 
come  in  Derbyshire;  which  led  her  to  con 
tinue,  with  unshrinking  frankness,  "  Certain 
ly,  I  don't  want  you  a  bit.  Leave  us  alone." 


THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME  87 

"  Is  it  safe  ?" 

"  Of  course  I  can't  absolutely  answer  for 
anything,  but  at  least  it  will  be  safer  than 
with  you"  said  Mrs.  Tregent. 

Maurice  Glanvil  turned  this  over.  "  Does 
he  dislike  me  ?" 

"  What  an  idea !" 

But  the  question  had  brought  the  color  to 
her  face,  and  the  sight  of  this,  with  her  eva 
sive  answer,  kindled  in  Maurice's  heart  a  sud 
den  relief,  a  delight  almost,  that  was  strange 
enough.  Arthur  was  in  opposition,  plainly, 
and  that  was  why  he  had  so  promptly  quitted 
London  ;  that  was  why  Mrs.  Tregent  had  re 
fused  Mr.  Glanvil.  The  idea  was  an  instant 
balm.  "  He'd  be  quite  right,  poor  fellow  !" 
Maurice  declared.  "I'll  go  abroad  alone." 

"  Let  me  keep  her  six  months,"  said  Mrs. 
Tregent.  "  I'll  try  it— I'll  try  it !" 

"  I  wouldn't  interfere  for  the  world." 

"  It's  an  immense  responsibility ;  but  I 
should  like  so  to  succeed." 

"  She's  an  angel !"  Maurice  said. 

"  That's  what  gives  me  courage." 

"  But  she  mustn't  dream  of  any  plot,"  he 
added. 


88  THE    WHEEL   OF   TIME 

"  For  what  do  you  take  me  ?"  Mrs.  Tre- 
gent  exclaimed,  with  a  smile  which  lightened 
up  for  him  intensely  that  far-away  troubled 
past  as  to  which  she  had  originally  baffled 
his  inquiry. 

The  joy  of  perceiving  in  an  aversion  to 
himself  a  possible  motive  for  Arthur's  ab 
sence  was  so  great  in  him  that  before  he 
took  leave  of  her  he  ventured  to  say  to  his 
old  friend,  "  Does  he  like  her  at  all  ?" 

"  He  likes  her  very  much." 

Maurice  remembered  how  much  he  had 
liked  Fanny  Knocker  and  been  willing  to 
admit  it  to  his  mother ;  but  he  presently  ob 
served,  "  Of  course  he  can't  think  her  in  the 
least  pretty." 

"As  you  say,  she's  an  angel,"  Mrs.  Tre- 
gent  rejoined. 

"  She  would  pass  for  one  better  if  she 
were  a  few  inches  taller." 

"  It  doesn't  matter,"  said  Mrs.  Tregent. 

"  One  must  remember  that  in  that  respect, 
at  her  age,  she  won't  change,"  Maurice  pur 
sued,  wondering  after  he  had  spoken  whether 
he  had  pressed  upon  the  second  pronoun. 

"  No,  she  won't  change.    But  she's  a  dar- 


THE    WHEEL   OF   TIME  89 

ling !"  Mrs.  Tregent  exclaimed  ;  and  it  was 
in  these  meagre  words,  which  were  only  half 
however  of  what  passed  between  them,  that 
an  extraordinary  offer  was  made  and  ac 
cepted.  They  were  so  ready  to  understand 
each  other  that  no  insistence  and  no  profes 
sions  now  were  necessary,  and  that  Maurice 
Glanvil  had  not  even  broken  into  a  murmur 
of  gratitude  at  this  quick  revelation  of  his 
old  friend's  beautiful  conception  of  a  nobler 
remedy — the  endeavor  to  place  their  union 
outside  themselves,  to  make  their  children 
know  the  happiness  they  had  missed.  They 
had  not  needed  to  teach  each  other  what 
they  saw,  what  they  guessed,  what  moved 
them  with  pity  and  hope,  and  there  were 
transitions  enough  safely  skipped  in  the 
simple  conversation  I  have  preserved.  But 
what  Mrs.  Tregent  was  ready  to  do  for  him 
filled  Maurice  Glanvil,  for  days  after  this, 
with  an  even  greater  wonder,  and  it  seemed 
to  him  that  not  till  then  had  she  fully  shown 
him  that  she  had  forgiven  him. 

Six  months,  however,  proved  much  more 
than  sufficient  for  her  attempt  to  test  the 
plasticity  of  her  son.  Maurice  Glanvil  went 


go  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

abroad,  but  was  nervous  and  restless,  wan 
dering  from  place  to  place,  revisiting  old 
scenes  and  old  friends,  reverting,  with  a 
conscious,  an  even  amused  incongruity,  and 
yet  with  an  effect  that  was  momentarily 
soothing,  to  places  at  which  he  had  stayed 
with  his  wife,  but  feeling  all  the  while  that 
he  was  really  staking  his  child's  happiness. 
It  only  half  reassured  him  to  feel  that 
Vera  would  never  know  what  poor  Fanny 
Knocker  had  been  condemned  to  know,  for 
the  daily  contact  was  cruel  from  the  mo 
ment  the  issue  was  uncertain  ;  and  it  only 
half  helped  him  to  reflect  that  she  was  not 
so  plain  as  Fanny,  for  had  not  Arthur  Tre- 
gent  given  him  the  impression  that  the 
young  man  of  the  present  was  intrinsically 
even  more  difficult  to  please  than  the  young 
man  of  the  past  ?  The  letters  he  received 
from  Blankley  conveyed  no  information 
about  Arthur  beyond  the  fact  that  he  was 
at  home ;  only  once  Vera  mentioned  that 
he  was  "  remarkably  good  "  to  her.  Tow 
ards  the  end  of  November  he  found  him 
self  in  Paris,  submitting  reluctantly  to  social 
accidents  which  put  off  from  day  to  day  his 


THE   WHEEL    OF    TIME  gi 

return  to  London,  when,  one  morning  in  the 
Rue  de  Rivoli,  he  had  to  stop  short  to  per 
mit  the  passage  of  a  vehicle  which  had 
emerged  from  the  court  of  an  hotel.  It  was 
an  open  cab  —  the  day  was  mild  and  bright 
— with  a  small  quantity  of  neat,  leathery 
luggage,  which  Maurice  vaguely  recognized 
as  English,  stowed  in  the  place  beside  the 
driver — luggage  from  which  his  eyes  shifted 
straight  to  the  occupant  of  the  carriage,  a 
young  man  with  his  face  turned  to  the  al 
lurements  of  travel  and  the  urbanity  of  fare 
well  to  bowing  waiters  still  visible  in  it. 
The  young  man  was  so  bright  and  so  on  his 
way,  as  it  were,  that  Maurice,  standing  there 
to  make  room  for  him,  felt  for  the  instant 
that  he,  too,  had  taken  a  tip.  The  feeling 
became  acute  as  he  recognized  that  this  hu 
miliating  obligation  was  to  no  less  a  per 
son  than  Arthur  Tregent.  It  was  Arthur 
who  was  so  much  on  his  way — it  was  Arthur 
who  was  catching  a  train.  He  noticed  his 
mother's  friend  as  the  cab  passed  into  the 
street,  and,  with  a  quick  demonstration, 
caused  the  driver  to  pull  up.  He  jumped 
out,  and  under  the  arcade  the  two  men  met 


92 


THE   WHEEL   OF   TIME 


with  every  appearance  of  cordiality,  but  with 
conscious  confusion.  Each  of  them  colored 
perceptibly,  and  Maurice  was  angry  with 
himself  for  blushing  before  a  boy.  Long 
afterwards  he  remembered  how  cold,  and 
even  how  hard,  was  the  handsome  clearness 
of  the  young  eyes  that  met  his  own  in  an 
artificial  smile. 

"You  here?  I  thought  you  were  at 
Blankley." 

"  I  left  Blankley  yesterday ;  I'm  on  my 
way  to  Spain." 

"  To  Spain  ?     How  charming !" 

"  To  join  a  friend  there — just  for  a  month 
or  two." 

"  Interesting  country — well  worth  seeing. 
Your  mother's  all  right  ?" 

"  Oh,  yes,  all  right.  And  Miss  Glanvil— " 
Arthur  Tregent  went  on,  cheerfully. 

"Vera's  all  right?"  interrupted  Maurice, 
with  a  still  gayer  tone. 

"  Every  one,  everything's  all  right !"  Ar 
thur  laughed. 

"Well,  I  mustn't  keep  you.  Bon  voy 
age!" 

Maurice  Glanvil,  after  the  young  man  had 


THE   WHEEL    OF   TIME  93 

driven  on,  flattered  himself  that  in  this  brief 
interview  he  had  suppressed  every  indication 
of  surprise  ;  but  that  evening  he  crossed  the 
Channel,  and  on  the  morrow  he  went  down 
to  Blankley.  "  To  Spain  —  to  Spain  !"  the 
words  kept  repeating  themselves  in  his  ears. 
He,  when  he  had  taken  flight  in  a  similar 
conjunction,  had  only  got,  for  the  time,  as 
far  as  Boulogne ;  and  he  was  reminded 
afresh  of  the  progress  of  the  species.  When 
he  was  introduced  into  the  drawing-room  at 
Blankley — a  chintzy,  flowery,  friendly  ex 
panse — Mrs.  Tregent  rose  before  him  alone 
and  offered  him  a  face  that  she  had  never 
shown  before.  She  was  white,  and  she 
looked  scared ;  she  faltered  in  her  move 
ment  to  meet  him. 

"  I  met  Arthur  in  Paris,  so  I  thought  I 
might  come." 

Oh,  yes ;  there  was  pain  in  her  face,  and 
a  kind  of  fear  of  him  that  frightened  him, 
but  their  hands  found  each  other's  hands 
while  she  replied  :  "  He  went  off —  I  didn't 
know  it." 

"  But  you  had  a  letter  the  next  morning," 
Maurice  said. 


94 


THE   WHEEL   OF    TIME 


She  stared.     "  How  did  you  know  that  ?" 
"  Who  should  know  better  than  I  ?     He 
wrote  from  London,  explaining." 

"I  did  what  I  could  —  I  believed  in  it!" 
said  Mrs.  Tregent.  "  He  was  charming,  for 
a  while." 

"  But  he  broke  down.  She's  too  short, 
eh  ?"  Maurice  asked. 

"Don't  laugh;  she's  ill." 
"  What's  the  matter  with  her  ?" 
Mrs.  Tregent  gave  the  visitor  a  look  in 
which  there  was  almost  a  reproach  for  the 
question.     "  She  has  had  a  chill ;   she's  in 
bed.     You  must  see  her." 

She  took  him  up-stairs  and  he  saw  his 
child.  He  remembered  what  his  mother 
had  told  him  of  the  grievous  illness  of  Fanny 
Knocker.  Poor  little  Vera  lay  there  in  the 
flush  of  a  feverish  cold,  which  had  come  on 
the  evening  before.  She  grew  worse,  from 
the  effect  of  a  complication,  and  for  three 
days  he  was  anxious  about  her ;  but  even 
more  than  with  his  alarm  he  held  his  breath 
before  the  distress,  the  disappointment,  the 
humility  of  his  old  friend.  Up  to  this  hour 
he  had  not  fully  measured  the  strength  of 


THE   WHEEL    OF    TIME 


95 


her  desire  to  do  something  for  him,  or  the 
intensity  of  passion  with  which  she  had 
wished  to  do  it  in  the  particular  way  that 
had  now  broken  down.  She  had  counted 
on  her  influence  with  her  son,  on  his  affec 
tion,  and  on  the  maternal  art,  and  there  was 
anguish  in  her  compunction  for  her  failure, 
for  her  false  estimate  of  the  possible.  Mau 
rice  Glanvil  reminded  her  in  vain  of  the 
consoling  fact  that  Vera  had  known  nothing 
of  any  plan,  and  he  guessed,  indeed,  the 
reason  why  this  theory  had  no  comfort.  No 
one  could  be  better  aware  than  Fanny  Tre- 
gent  of  how  much  girls  knew  who  knew 
nothing.  It  was  doubtless  this  same  sad 
wisdom  that  kept  her  sombre  when  he  ex 
pressed  a  confidence  that  his  child  would 
promptly  recover.  She  herself  had  had  a  ter 
rible  fight  —  and  yet,  with  the  physical  vic 
tory,  had  she  recovered  ?  Her  apprehen 
sion  for  Vera  was  justified,  for  the  poor 
girl  was  destined  finally  to  forfeit  even  the 
physical  victory. 

She  got  better,  she  got  up,  she  quitted 
Blankley,  she  quitted  England  with  her 
father ;  but  her  health  had  failed,  and  a 


g6  THE    WHEEL    OF    TIME 

year  later  it  gave  way.  Overtaken  in  Rome 
by  a  second  illness,  she  succumbed ;  unlike 
Fanny  Knocker,  she  was  never  to  have  her 
revenge. 


COLLABORATION 


COLLABORATION 

I  DON'T  know  how  much  people  care  for 
my  work,  but  they  like  my  studio  (of  which, 
indeed,  I  am  exceedingly  fond  myself),  as 
they  show  by  their  inclination  to  congregate 
there  at  dusky  hours  on  winter  afternoons, 
or  on  long,  dim  evenings,  when  the  place 
looks  well  with  its  rich  combinations  and 
low- burning  lamps,  and  the  bad  pictures 
(my  own)  are  not  particularly  visible.  I 
won't  go  into  the  question  of  how  many  of 
these  are  purchased,  but  I  rejoice  in  the 
distinction  that  my  invitations  are  never 
declined.  Some  of  my  visitors  have  been 
good  enough  to  say  that  on  Sunday  even 
ings  in  particular  there  is  no  pleasanter 
place  in  Paris— where  so  many  places  are 
pleasant — none  friendlier  to  easy  talk  and 
repeated  cigarettes,  to  the  exchange  of 
points  of  view  and  the  comparison  of  ac- 


100  COLLABORATION 

cents.  The  air  is  as  international  as  only 
Parisian  air  can  be ;  women,  I  surmise,  think 
they  look  well  in  it;  they  come,  also,  because 
they  fancy  they  are  doing  something  Bohe 
mian,  just  as  many  of  the  men  come  because 
they  suppose  they  are  doing  something  cor 
rect.  The  old  heraldic  cushions  on  the  di 
vans,  embossed  with  rusty  gold,  are  favor 
able  both  to  expansion  and  to  contraction — 
that,  of  course,  of  contracting  parties — and 
the  Italian  brocade  on  the  walls  appeals  to 
one's  highest  feelings.  Music  makes  its 
home  there,  though  I  confess  I  am  not  quite 
the  master  otthat  house;  and  when  it  is  go 
ing  on  in  a  truly  receptive  hush,  I  enjoy 
the  way  my  company  leans  back  and  gazes 
through  the  thin  smoke  of  cigarettes  up  at 
the  distant  Tiepolo  in  the  almost  palatial 
ceiling.  I  make  sure  the  piano,  the  tobacco, 
and  the  tea  are  all  of  the  best. 

For  the  conversation,  I  leave  that  mostly 
to  take  care  of  itself.  There  are  discussions, 
of  course,  and  differences — sometimes  even 
a  violent  circulation  of  sense  and  sound ; 
but  I  have  a  consciousness  that  beauty  flour 
ishes  and  that  harmonies  prevail  in  the  end. 


COLLABORATION  IQI 

I  have  occasionally  known  a  visitor  to  be 
rude  to  me  because  he  disliked  another  vis 
itor's  opinions — I  had  seen  an  old  habitue' 
slip  away  without  bidding  me  good-night  on 
the  arrival  of  some  confident  specimen  of 
les  jeunes ;  but  as  a  general  thing  we  have  it 
out  together  on  the  spot — the  place  is  really 
a  chamber  of  justice,  a  temple  of  reconcilia 
tion  :  we  understand  each  other,  if  we  only 
sit  up  late  enough.  Art  protects  her  chil 
dren,  in  the  long  run — she  only  asks  them 
to  trust  her.  She  is  like  the  Catholic  Church 
— she  guarantees  paradise  to  the  faithful. 
Music,  moreover,  is  a  universal  solvent; 
though  I've  not  an  infallible  ear,  I've  a  suf 
ficient  sense  of  the  matter  for  that.  Ah, 
the  wounds  I've  known  it  to  heal  —  the 
bridges  I've  known  it  to  build — the  ghosts 
I've  known  it  to  lay !  Though  I've  seen 
people  stalk  out,  I've  never  observed  them 
not  to  steal  back.  My  studio,  in  short,  is 
the  theatre  of  a  cosmopolite  drama,  a  com 
edy  essentially  "  of  character." 

One  of  the  liveliest  scenes  of  the  perform 
ance  was  the  evening,  last  winter,  on  which 
I  became  aware  that  one  of  my  compatriots 


102  COLLABORATION 

— an  American,  my  good  friend  Alfred  Bo 
nus — was  engaged  in  a  controversy  some 
what  acrimonious,  on  a  literary  subject,  with 
Herman  Heidenmauer,  the  young  composer 
who  had  been  playing  to  us  divinely  a  short 
time  before,  and  whom  I  thought  of  neither 
as  a  disputant  nor  as  an  Englishman.  I 
perceived  in  a  moment  that  something  had 
happened  to  present  him  in  this  combined 
character  to  poor  Bonus,  who  was  so  ardent 
a  patriot  that  he  lived  in  Paris  rather  than 
in  London,  who  had  met  his  interlocutor  for 
the  first  time  on  this  occasion,  and  who  ap 
parently  had  been  misled  by  the  perfection 
with  which  Heidenmauer  spoke  English — he 
spoke  it  really  better  than  Alfred  Bonus. 
The  young  musician,  a  born  Bavarian,  had 
spent  a  few  years  in  England,  where  he  had 
a  commercial  step-brother  planted  and  more 
or  less  prosperous — a  helpful  man  who  had 
watched  over  his  difficult  first  steps,  given 
him  a  temporary  home,  found  him  publish 
ers  and  pupils,  smoothed  the  way  to  a  stu 
pefied  hearing  for  his  first  productions.  He 
knew  his  London  and  might  at  a  first  glance 
have  been  taken  for  one  of  its  products ;  but 


COLLABORATION  103 

he  had,  in  addition  to  a  genius  of  the  sort 
that  London  fosters  but  doesn't  beget,  a 
very  German  soul.  He  brought  me  a  note 
from  an  old  friend  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Channel,  and  I  liked  him  as  soon  as  I  looked 
at  him ;  so  much,  indeed,  that  I  could  for 
give  him  for  making  me  feel  thin  and  em 
pirical,  conscious  that  he  was  one  of  the 
higher  kind  whom  the  future  has  looked  in 
the  face.  He  had  met  through  his  gold 
spectacles  her  deep  eyes,  and  some  mutual 
communication  had  occurred.  This  had 
given  him  a  confidence  which  passed  for 
conceit  only  with  those  who  didn't  know 
the  reason. 

I  guessed  the  reason  early,  and,  as  may 
be  imagined,  he  didn't  grudge  me  the  knowl 
edge.  He  was  happy  and  various — as  little 
as  possible  the  mere  long-haired  music- 
monger.  His  hair  was  short ;  it  was  only 
his  legs  and  his  laughter  that  were  long. 
He  was  fair  and  rosy,  and  his  gold  specta 
cles  glittered  as  if  in  response  to  the  exam 
ple  set  them  by  his  beautiful  young  golden 
beard.  You  would  have  been  sure  he  was 
an  artist  without  going  so  far  as  to  decide 


104  COLLABORATION 

upon  his  particular  passion ;  for  you  would 
have  been  conscious  that  whatever  this  pas 
sion  might  be,  it  was  acquainted  with  many 
of  the  others  and  mixed  with  them  to  its 
profit.  Yet  these  discoveries  had  not  been 
fully  made  by  Alfred  Bonus,  whose  occupa 
tion  was  to  write  letters  to  the  American 
journals  about  the  way  the  "  boys  "  were 
coming  on  in  Paris ;  for  in  such  a  case  he 
probably  would  not  have  expected  such 
nebulous  greatness  to  condense  at  a  mo 
ment's  notice.  Bonus  is  clever  and  critical, 
and  a  sort  of  self-appointed  emissary  or  agent 
of  the  great  republic.  He  has  it  at  heart  to 
prove  that  the  Americans  in  Europe  do  get 
on — taking  for  granted  on  the  part  of  the 
Americans  at  home  an  interest  in  this  sub 
ject  greater,  as  I  often  assure  him,  than  any 
really  felt.  "  Come,  now,  do  /  get  on  ?"  I 
often  ask  him ;  and  I  sometimes  push  the 
inquiry  so  far  as  to  stammer,  "  And  you,  my 
dear  Bonus,  do  you  get  on  ?"  He  is  apt  to 
look  a  little  injured  on  such  occasions,  as  if 
he  would  like  to  say,  in  reply :  "  Don't  you 
call  it  success  to  have  Sunday  evenings  at 
which  I'm  a  regular  attendant  ?  And  can 


COLLABORATION  105 

you  question  for  a  moment  the  figure  I  make 
at  them  ?"  It  has  even  occurred  to  me  that 
he  suspects  me  of  painting  badly  on  purpose 
to  spite  him — that  is,  to  interfere  with  his 
favorite  dogma.  Therefore,  to  spite  me  in 
return,  he's  in  the  heroic  predicament  of  re 
fusing  to  admit  that  I'm  a  failure.  He  takes 
a  great  interest  in  the  plastic  arts,  but  his 
intensest  sympathy  is  for  literature.  This 
sentiment  is  somewhat  starved,  as  in  that 
school  the  boys  languish,  as  yet,  on  a  back 
seat.  To  show  what  they  are  doing,  Bonus 
has  to  retreat  upon  the  studios,  but  there  is 
nothing  he  enjoys  so  much  as  having,  when 
the  rare  chance  offers,  a  good  literary  talk. 
He  follows  the  French  movement  closely 
and  explains  it  profusely  to  our  compatriots, 
whom  he  mystifies,  but  who  guess  he's  rath 
er  loose. 

I  forget  how  his  conversation  with  Hei- 
denmauer  began  ;  it  was,  I  think,  some  dif 
ference  of  opinion  about  one  of  the  English 
poets  that  set  them  afloat.  Heidenmauer 
knows  the  English  poets,  and  the  French, 
and  the  Italian,  and  the  Spanish,  and  the 
Russian ;  he  is  a  wonderful  representative 


io6  ''COLLABORATION 

-4 

of  that  Germanism  which  consists  in  the 
negation  of  intellectual  frontiers.  It  is  the 
English  poets  that,  if  I'm  not  mistaken,  he 
loves  best,  and  probably  the  harm  was  done 
by  his  having  happened  to  say  so.  At  any 
rate,  Alfred  Bonus  let  him  have  it,  without 
due  notice,  perhaps,  which  is  rather  Alfi^d's 
way,  on  the  question  (a  favorite  one  with  ray 
compatriot)  of  the  backward  state  of  litera 
ture  in  England,  for  which,  after  all,  Heiden- 
mauer  was  not  responsible.  Bonus  believes 
in  responsibility — the  responsibility  of  oth 
ers — an  attitude  which  tends  to  make  some 
of  his  friends  extremely  secretive,  though 
perhaps  it  would  have  been  justified — as  to 
this  I'm  not  sure — had  Heidenmauer  been, 
under  the  circumstances,  technically  British. 
Before  he  had  had  time  to  explain  that  he 
was  not,  the  other  persons  present  had  be 
come  aware  that  a  kind  of  challenge  had 
passed — that  nation,  in  a  sudden,  startled 
flurry,  somehow  found  itself  pitted  against 
nation.  There  was  much  vagueness  at  first 
as  to  which  of  the  nations  were  engaged, 
and  as  to  what  their  quarrel  was  about ;  the 
question  coming  presently  to  appear  less 


COLLABORATION  107 

simple  than  the  spectacle  (so  easily  con 
ceivable)  of  a  German's  finding  it  hot  for 
him  in  a  French  house — a  house  French 
enough,  at  any  ra.te,  to  give  countenance  to 
the  idea  of  his  quick  defeat. 

How  could  the  right  cause  fail  of  protec 
tion  in  any  house  of  which  Madame  de 
Brindes  and  her  charming  daughter  were 
so  good  as  to  be  assiduous  frequenters  ? 
I  recollect  perfectly  the  pale  gleam  of  joy 
in  the  mother's  handsome  face  when  she 
gathered  that  what  had  happened  was  that 
a  detested  Germart  was  on  his  defence. 
She  wears  her  eternal  mourning  (I  admit 
it's  immensely  becoming)  for  a  triple  woe, 
for  multiplied  griefs  and  wrongs,  all  spring 
ing  from  the  crash  of  the  Empire,  from  the 
battle-fields  of  1870.  Her  husband  fell  at 
Sedan,  her  father  and  her  brother  on  still 
darker  days  ;  both  her  own  family  >and  that 
of  M.  de  Brindes,  their  general  situation  in 
life,  were,  as  may  be  said,  creations  of  the 
Empire,  so  that  from  one  hour  to  the  other 
she  found  herself  sinking  with  the  wreck. 
You  won't  recognize  her  under  the  name  I 
give  her,  but  you  may  none  the  less  have 


I08  COLLABORATION 

admired,  between  their  pretty  lemon-colored 
covers,  the  touching  tales  of  Claude  Lor- 
rain.  She  plies  an  ingenious,  pathetic  pen, 
and  has  reconciled  herself  to  effort  and 
privation  for  the  sake  of  her  daughter.  I 
say  privation,  because  these  distinguished 
women  are  poor,  receive  with  great  modesty, 
and  have  broken  with  a  hundred  of  those 
social  sanctities  that  are  dearer  to  French 
souls  than  to  any  others.  They  have  gone 
down  into  the  market-place,  and  Paule  de 
Brindes,  who  is  three-and-twenty  to-day,  and 
has  a  happy  turn  for  keeping  a  water-color 
liquid,  earns  a  hundred  francs  here  and 
there.  She  is  not  so  handsome  as  her 
mother,  but  she  has  magnificent  hair,  and 
what  the  French  call  a  look  of  race,  and  is, 
or  at  least  was  till  the  other  day,  a  frank 
and  charming  young  woman.  There  is  some 
thing  exquisite  in  the  way  these  ladies  are 
earnestly,  conscientiously  modern.  From 
the  moment  they  accept  necessities  they 
accept  them  all,  and  poor  Madame  de 
Brindes  flatters  herself  that  she  has  made 
her  dowerless  daughter  one  of  us  others. 
The  girl  goes  out  alone,  talks  with  young 


COLLABORATION  109 

men  and,  although  she  only  paints  land 
scape,  takes  a  free  view  of  the  convenances. 
Nothing  can  please  either  of  them  more 
than  to  tell  them  they  have  thrown  over 
their  superstitions.  They  haven't,  thank 
Heaven ;  and  when  I  want  to  be  reminded 
of  some  of  the  prettiest  in  the  world — of  a 
thousand  fine  scruples  and  pleasant  forms, 
and  of  what  grace  can  do  for  the  sake  of 
grace — I  know  where  to  go  for  it. 

It  was  a  part  of  this  pious  heresy — much 
more  august  in  the  way  they  presented  it 
than  some  of  the  aspects  of  the  old  faith — 
that  Paule  should  have  become  "engaged," 
quite  like  a  jeune  mees,  to  my  brilliant 
friend  Felix  Vendemer.  He  is  such  a 
votary  of  the  modern  that  he  was  inevitably 
interested  in  the  girl  of  the  future  and  had 
matched  one  reform  with  another,  being 
ready  to  marry  without  a  penny,  as  the 
clearest  way  of  expressing  his  appreciation, 
this  favorable  specimen  of  the  type.  He 
simply  fell  in  love  with  Mademoiselle  de 
Brindes  and  behaved,  on  his  side,  equally 
like  one  of  us  others,  except  that  he  begged 
me  to  ask  her  mother  for  her  hand.  I  was 


HO  COLLABORATION 

inspired  to  do  so  with  eloquence,  and  my 
friends  were  not  insensible  of  such  an  op 
portunity  to  show  that  they  now  lived  in 
the  world  of  realities.  Vendemer's  sole 
fortune  is  his  genius,  and  he  and  Paule, 
who  confessed  to  an  answering  flame, 
plighted  their  troth  like  a  pair  of  young 
rustics  or  (what  comes  for  French  people 
to  the  same  thing)  young  Anglo-Saxons. 
Madame  de  Brindes  thinks  such  doings  at 
bottom  very  vulgar ;  but  vulgar  is  what  she 
tries  hard  to  be,  she  is  so  convinced  it  is  the 
only  way  to  make  a  living.  Vendemerhadhad 
at  that  time  only  the  first  of  his  successes, 
which  was  not,  as  you  will  remember — and 
unfortunately  for  Madame  de  Brindes — of 
this  remunerative  kind.  Only  a  few  peo 
ple  recognized  the  perfection  of  his  little 
volume  of  verse ;  my  acquaintance  with 
him  originated  in  my  having  been  one  of 
the  few.  A  volume  of  verse  was  a  scanty 
provision  to  marry  on,  so  that,  still  like  a 
pair  of  us  others,  the  luckless  lovers  had  to 
bide  their  time.  Presently,  however,  came 
the  success  (again  a  success  only  with 
those  who  care  for  quality,  not  with  the 


COLLABORATION  m 

rough-and-ready  public)  of  his  comedy  in 
verse  at  the  Frangais.  This  charming 
work  had  just  been  taken  off  (it  had  been 
found  not  to  make  money),  when  the  various 
parties  to  my  little  drama  met  Heidenmauer 
at  my  studio. 

Vendemer,  who  has,  as  indeed  the  others 
have,  a  passion  for  music,  was  tremendously 
affected  by  hearing  him  play  two  or  three 
of  his  compositions,  and  I  immediately  saw 
that  the  immitigable  German  quality  was  a 
morsel  much  less  bitter  for  him  than  for 
the  two  uncompromising  ladies.  He  went 
so  far  as  to  speak  to  Heidenmauer  frankly, 
to  thank'  him  with  effusion,  an  effort  of 
which  neither  of  the  quivering  women 
would  have  been  capable.  Vendemer  was 
in  the  room  the  night  Alfred  Bonus  raised 
his  little  breeze ;  I  saw  him  lean  on  the 
piano  and  listen  with  a  queer  face,  looking 
however  rather  wonderingly  at  Heiden 
mauer.  Before  this  I  had  noticed  the  in 
stant  paleness  (her  face  was  admirably 
expressive)  with  which  Madame  de  Brindes 
saw  her  prospective  son  -  in  -  law  make  up, 
as  it  were,  to  the  original  Teuton,  whose 


H2  COLLABORATION 

national  character  was  intensified  to  her 
aching  mind,  as  it  would  have  been  to  that 
of  most  Frenchwomen  in  her  place,  by  his 
wash  of  English  color.  A  German  was 
bad  enough  —  but  a  German  with  English 
aggravations !  Her  senses  were  too  fine  to 
give  her  the  excuse  of  not  feeling  that  his 
compositions  were  interesting,  and  she  was 
capable,  magnanimously,  of  listening  to 
them  with  dropped  eyes ;  but  (much  as  it 
ever  cost  her  not  to  be  perfectly  courteous) 
she  couldn't  have  made  even  the  most 
superficial  speech  to  him  about  them. 
Marie  de  Brindes  could  never  have  spoken 
to  Herman  Heidenmauer.  It  was  a  narrow 
ness,  if  you  will,  but  a  narrowness  that  to 
my  vision  was  enveloped  in  a  dense  atmos 
phere — a  kind  of  sunset  bloom — of  enrich 
ing  and  fortifying  things.  Herman  Heiden 
mauer  himself,  like  the  man  of  imagination 
and  the  lover  of  life  that  he  was,  would 
have  entered  into  it  delightedly,  been 
charmed  with  it  as  a  fine  case  of  bigotry. 
This  was  conspicuous  in  Marie  de  Brindes ; 
her  loyalty  to  the  national  idea  was  that  of 
a  devote  to  a  form  of  worship.  She  never 


COLLABORATION  113 

spoke  of  France,  but  she  always  made  me 
think  of  it,  and  with  an  authority  which 
the  women  of  her  race  seem  to  me  to  have 
in  the  question  much  more  than  the  men. 
I  dare  say  I'm  rather  in  love  with  her, 
though,  being  considerably  younger,  I've 
never  told  her  so — as  if  she  would  in  the 
least  mind  that !  I  have  indeed  been  a 
little  checked  by  a  spirit  of  allegiance  to 
Vendemer ;  suspecting  always  (excuse  my 
sophistication)  that  in  the  last  analysis  it  is 
the  mother's  charm  that  he  feels — or  origi 
nally  felt — in  the  daughter's.  He  spoke  of 
the  elder  lady  to  me  in  those  days  with  the 
insistence  with  which  only  a  Frenchman 
can  speak  of  the  objects  of  his  affection. 
At  any  rate,  there  was  always  something 
symbolic  and  slightly  ceremonial  to  me  in 
her  delicate  cameo  face  and  her  general 
black-robed  presence :  she  made  me  think 
of  a  priestess  or  a  mourner,  of  revolu 
tions  and  sieges,  detested  treaties  and  ugly 
public  things.  I  pitied  her,  too,  for  the 
strife  of  the  elements  in  her — for  the  way 
she  must  have  felt  a  noble  enjoyment  muti 
lated.  She  was  too  good  for  that,  and  yet 


H4 


COLLABORATION 


she  was  too  rigid  for  anything  else ;  and 
the  sight  of  such  dismal  perversions  made 
me  hate  more  than  ever  the  stupid  terms 
on  which  nations  have  organized  their  in 
tercourse. 

When  she  gathered  that  one  of  my  guests 
was  simply  cramming  it  down  the  throat  of 
another  that  the  English  literary  mind  was 
not  even  literary,  she  turned  away  with  a 
vague  shrug  and  a  pitiful  look  at  her 
daughter  for  the  taste  of  people  who  took 
their  pleasure  so  poorly ;  the  truth  in  ques 
tion  would  be  so  obvious  that  it  was  not 
worth  making  a  scene  about.  Madame  de 
Brindes  evidently  looked  at  any  scene  be 
tween  the  English  and  the  Americans  as 
a  quarrel  proceeding  vaguely  from  below- 
stairs — a  squabble  sordidly  domestic.  Her 
almost  immediate  departure  with  her  daugh 
ter  operated  as  a  very  lucky  interruption, 
and  I  caught  for  the  first  time  in  the 
straight,  spare  girl,  as  she  followed  her 
mother,  a  little  of  the  air  that  Vendemer 
had  told  me  he  found  in  her,  the  still 
exaltation,  the  brown  uplifted  head  that  we 
attribute,  or  that  at  any  rate  he  made  it 


COLLABORATION        «  115 

visible  to  me  that  he  attributed,  to  the 
dedicated  Maid.  He  considered  that  his  in 
tended  bore  a  striking  resemblance  to  Jeanne 
d'Arc,  and  he  marched  after  her  on  this 
occasion  like  a  square-shouldered  armour- 
baarer.  He  reappeared,  however,  after  he 
had  put  the  ladies  into  a  cab,  and  half  an 
hour  later,  the  rest  of  my  friends,  with  the 
sole  exception  of  Bonus,  having  dispersed, 
he  was  sitting  up  with  me  in  the  empty 
studio  for  another  bout  de  causerie.  At  first 
perhaps  I  was  too  occupied  with  reprimand 
ing  my  compatriot  to  give  much  attention 
to  what  Vendemer  might  have  to  say;  I 
remember  at  any  rate  that  I  had  asked 
Bonus  what  had  induced  him  to  make  so 
grave  a  blunder.  He  was  not  even  yet,  it 
appeared,  aware  of  his  blunder,  so  that  I  had 
to  inquire  by  what  odd  chance  he  had  taken 
Heidenmauer  for  a  bigoted  Briton. 

"  If  I  spoke  to  him  as  one,  he  answered 
as  one;  that's  bigoted  enough,"  said  Alfred 
Bonus. 

"  He  was  confused  and  amused  at  your 
onslaught :  he  wondered  what  fly  had  stung 
you." 


Il6  COLLABORATION 

"  The  fly  of  patriotism,"  Vendemer  sug 
gested. 

"  Do  you  like  him — a  beast  of  a  German  ?" 
Bonus  demanded. 

"  If  he's  an  Englishman  he  isn't  a  German 
— ilfautopter.  We  can  hang  him  for  the  one 
or  for  the  other;  we  can't  hang  him  for  both. 
I  was  immensely  struck  with  those  things  he 
played." 

"They  had  no  charm  for  me,  or  doubt 
less  I,  too,  should  have  been  demoralized," 
Alfred  said.  "  He  seemed  to  know  noth 
ing  about  Miss  Brownrigg.  Now  Miss 
Brownrigg's  great." 

"  I  like  the  things  and  even  the  people 
you  quarrel  about,  you  big  babies  of  the 
same  breast.  C'esf  d  se  tordre /"  Vendemer 
declared. 

"  I  may  be  very  abject,  but  I  do  take  an 
interest  in  the  American  novel,"  Alfred 
rejoined. 

"I  hate  such  expressions ;  there's  no  such 
thing  as  the  American  novel." 

"  Is  there  by  chance  any  such  thing  as 
the  French  ?" 

"Pas  d'avantage — for  the  artist  himself; 


COLLABORATION  Iiy 

how  can  you  ask  ?  I  don't  know  what  is 
meant  by  French  art  and  English  art  and 
American  art ;  those  seem  to  me  mere  cata 
loguers'  and  reviewers'  and  tradesmen's 
names,  representing  preoccupations  utterly 
foreign  to  the  artist.  Art  is  art  in  every 
country,  and  the  novel  (since  Bonus  men 
tions  that)  is  the  novel  in  every  tongue, 
and  hard  enough  work  they  have  to  live  up 
to  that  privilege,  without  our  adding  another 
muddle  to  the  problem.  The  reader,  the 
consumer,  may  call  things  as  he  likes,  but 
we  leave  him  to  his  little  amusements."  I 
suggested  that  we  were  all  readers  and  con 
sumers  ;  which  only  made  Vendemer  con 
tinue  :  "Yes,  and  only  a  small  handful  of  us 
have  the  ghost  of  a  palate.  But  you  and  I 
and  Bonus  are  of  the  handful." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  the  handful?" 
Bonus  inquired. 

Vendemer  hesitated  a  moment.  "  I  mean 
the  few  intelligent  people,  and  even  the  few 
people  who  are  not — "  He  paused  again 
an  instant,  long  enough  for  me  to  request 
him  not  to  say  what  they  were  "  not,"  and 
then  went  on  :  "  People,  in  a  word,  who  have 


Il8  COLLABORATION 

the  honor  to  live  in  the  only  country  worth 
living  in." 

"And  pray  what  country  is  that  ?" 

"The  land  of  dreams  —  the  country  of 
art." 

"  Oh,  the  land  of  dreams  !  I  live  in  the 
land  of  realities !"  Bonus  exclaimed.  "What 
do  you  all  mean  then  by  chattering  so  about 
le  roman  russe  T"1 

"  It's  a  convenience — to  identify  the  work 
of  three  or  four,  la-bas,  because  we're  so  far 
from  it.  But  do  you  see  them  writing  '  le 
roman  russe  ?' " 

"  I  happen  to  know  that  that's  exactly 
what  they  want  to  do,  some  of  them,"  said 
Bonus. 

"  Some  of  the  idiots,  then  !  There  are 
plenty  of  those  everywhere.  Anything  born 
under  that  silly  star  is  sure  not  to  count." 

"Thank  God  I'm  not  an  artist !"  said 
Bonus. 

"  Dear  Alfred's  a  critic,"  I  explained. 

"  And  I'm  not  ashamed  of  my  country," 
he  subjoined. 

"  Even  a  critic  perhaps  may  be  an  artist," 
Vendemer  mused. 


COLLABORATION  1 19 

"  Then,  as  the  great  American  critic,  Bonus 
may  be  the  great  American  artist,"  I  went  on. 

"  Is  that  what  you're  supposed  to  give  us 
— '  American '  criticism  ?''  Vendemer  asked, 
with  dismay  in  his  expressive,  ironic  face. 
"  Take  care,  take  care,  or  it  will  be  more 
American  than  critical,  and  then  where  will 
vou  be  ?  However,"  he  continued,  laughing 
and  with  a  change  of  tone,  "I  may  see  the 
matter  in  too  lurid  a  light,  for  I've  just  been 
favored  with  a  judgment  conceived  in  the 
purest  spirit  of  our  own  national  genius." 
He  looked  at  me  a  moment  and  then  he  re 
marked,  "That  dear  Madame  de  Brindes 
doesn't  approve  of  my  attitude." 

"  Your  attitude  ?" 

"Towards  your  German  friend.  She  let 
me  know  it  when  I  went  down-stairs  with 
her — told  me  I  was  much  too  cordial,  that  I 
must  observe  myself." 

"  And  what  did  you  reply  to  that  ?" 

"  I  answered  that  the  things  he  had  played 
were  extraordinarily  beautiful." 

"  And  how  did  she  meet  that?" 

"  By  saying  that  he's  an  enemy  of  our 
country." 


120  COLLABORATION 

"She  had  you  there,"  I  rejoined. 

"  Yes,  I  could  only  reply,  '  Che  re  madame, 
voyons  /' " 

"  That  was  meagre." 

"  Evidently,  for  it  did  no  more  for  me 
than  to  give  her  a  chance  to  declare  that  he 
can't  possibly  be  here  for  any  good,  and  that 
he  belongs  to  a  race  it's  my  sacred  duty  to 
loathe." 

"I  see  what  she  means." 

"I  don't,  then  —  where  artists  are  con 
cerned.  I  said  to  her,  '^4/i,  madame,  vous 
savez  que pour  moi  il  n'y  a  que  I' art!' '' 

"  It's  very  exciting  !"  I  laughed.  "  How 
could  she  parry  that  ?" 

"  '  I  know  it,  my  dear  child  —  but  for 
him  1 '  That's  the  way  she  parried  it. 
'  Very  well,  for  him  ?'  I  asked.  '  For  him 
there's  the  insolence  of  the  victor  and 
a  secret  scorn  for  our  incurable  illu 
sions  !' " 

"  Heidenmauer  has  no  insolence  and  no 
secret  scorn." 

Vendemer  was  silent  a  moment.  "  Are 
you  very  sure  of  that  ?" 

"  Oh,  I  like  him  !     He's  out  of  all  that, 


COLLABORATION  121 

and  far  above  it.  But  what  did  Mademoi 
selle  Paule  say  ?"  I  inquired. 

"  She  said  nothing — she  only  looked  at 
me." 

"  Happy  man  !" 

"Not  a  bit.  She  looked  at  me  with 
strange  eyes,  in  which  I  could  read,  '  Go 
straight,  my  friend — go  straight !'  Oh,  les 
femmes,  les  femmes  !" 

"  What's  the  matter  with  them  now  ?" 

"  They've  a  mortal  hatred  of  art !" 

"  It's  a  true,  deep  instinct,"  said  Alfred 
Bonus. 

"  But  what  passed  further  with  Madame 
de  Brindes  ?"  I  went  on. 

"  She  only  got  into  her  cab,  pushing  her 
daughter  first ;  on  which  I  slammed  the  door 
rather  hard  and  came  up  here.  Cela  m'a 
porte  sur  les  nerfs" 

"I'm  afraid  I  haven't  soothed  them," 
Bonus  said,  looking  for  his  hat.  When  he 
had  found  it  he  added  :  "  When  the  Eng 
lish  have  beaten  us  and  pocketed  our  mill 
iards  I'll  forgive  them ;  but  not  till  then  !" 
And  with  this  he  went  off,  made  a  little  un 
comfortable,  I  think,  by  Vendemer's  sharper 


122  COLLABORATION 

alternatives,  while  the  young  Frenchman 
called  after  him,  "  My  dear  fellow,  at  night 
all  cats  are  gray  !" 

Vendemer,  when  we  were  left  alone  to 
gether,  mooned  about  the  empty  studio 
a  while  and  asked  me  three  or  four  questions 
about  Heidenmauer.  I  satisfied  his  curiosity 
as  well  as  I  could,  but  I  demanded  the 
reason  of  it.  The  reason  he  gave  was  that 
one  of  the  young  German's  compositions 
had  already  begun  to  haunt  his  memory; 
but  that  was  a  reason  which,  to  my  sense, 
still  left  something  unexplained.  I  didn't, 
however,  challenge  him,  before  he  quitted 
me,  further  than  to  warn  him  against  being 
deliberately  perverse. 

"  What  do  you  mean  by  being  deliberate 
ly  perverse  ?"  He  fixed  me  so  with  his  in 
tensely  living  French  eye  that  I  became 
almost  blushingly  conscious  of  a  certain  in 
sincerity  and,  instead  of  telling  him  what  I 
meant,  tried  to  get  off  with  the  deplorable 
remark  that  the  prejudices  of  Mesdames  de 
Brindes  were,  after  all,  respectable.  "  That's 
exactly  what  makes  them  so  odious !"  cried 
Vendemer. 


COLLABORATION  123 

A  few  days  after  this,  late  in  the  after 
noon,  Herman  Heidenmauer  came  in  to  see 
me  and  found  the  young  Frenchman  seated 
at  my  piano — trying  to  win  back  from  the 
keys  some  echo  of  a  passage  in  the  Abend- 
Hed  we  had  listened  to  on  the  Sunday  even 
ing.  They  met,  naturally,  as  good  friends, 
and  Heidenmauer  sat  down  with  instant 
readiness  and  gave  him  again  the  page  he 
was  trying  to  recover.  He  asked  him  for 
his  address,  that  he  might  send  him  the 
composition,  and  at  Vendemer's  request,  as 
we  sat  in  the  firelight,  played  half  a  dozen 
other  things.  Vendemer  listened  in  silence, 
but  to  my  surprise  took  leave  of  me  before 
the  lamp  was  brought  in.  I  asked  him  to 
stay  to  dinner  (I  had  already  appealed  to 
Heidenmauer  to  stay),  but  he  explained  that 
he  was  engaged  to  dine  with  Madame  de 
Brindes — d  la  maison,  as  he  always  called  it. 
When  he  had  gone  Heidenmauer,  with  whom 
on  departing  he  had  shaken  hands  without 
a  word,  put  to  me  the  same  questions  about 
him  that  Vendemer  had  asked  on  the  Sun 
day  evening  about  the  young  German,  and 
I  replied  that  my  visitor  would  find  in  a 


124  COLLABORATION 

small  volume  of  remarkable  verse  published 
by  Lemerre,  which  I  placed  in  his  hands, 
much  of  the  information  he  desired.  This 
volume,  which  had  just  appeared,  contained, 
besides  a  reprint  of  Vendemer's  earlier  pro 
ductions,  many  of  them  admirable  lyrics, 
the  drama  that  had  lately  been  played  at 
the  Frangais,  and  Heidenmauer  took  it  with 
him  when  he  left  me.  But  he  left  me  late, 
and  before  this  occurred,  all  the  evening, 
we  had  much  talk  about  the  French  nation. 
In  the  foreign  colony  of  Paris  the  exchange 
of  opinions  on  this  subject  is  one  of  the  most 
inevitable  and  by  no  means  the  least  inter 
esting  of  distractions  ;  it  furnishes  occupa 
tion  to  people  rather  conscious  of  the  burden 
of  leisure.  Heidenmauer  had  been  little  in 
Paris,  but  he  was  all  the  more  open  to  im 
pressions  ;  they  evidently  poured  in  upon 
him  and  he  gave  them  a  generous  hospitality. 
In  the  diffused  white  light  of  his  fine  German 
intelligence  old  colors  took  on  new  tints  to 
me,  and  while  we  spun  fancies  about  the 
wonderful  race  around  us  I  added  to  my 
little  stock  of  notions  about  his  own.  I  saw 
that  his  admiration  for  our  neighbors  was  a 


COLLABORATION  125 

very  high  tide,  and  I  was  struck  with  some 
thing  bland  and  unconscious  (noble  and 
serene  in  its  absence  of  precautions)  in  the 
way  he  let  his  doors  stand  open  to  it.  It 
would  have  been  exasperating  to  many 
Frenchmen ;  he  looked  at  them  through  his 
clear  spectacles  with  such  an  absence  of  sus 
picion  that  they  might  have  anything  to  for 
give  him,  such  a  thin  metaphysical  view  of 
instincts  and  passions.  He  had  the  air  of 
not  allowing  for  recollections  and  nerves, 
and  would  doubtless  give  them  occasion  to 
make  afresh  some  of  their  reflections  on  the 
tact  of  ces  gens-la. 

A  couple  of  days  after  I  had  given  him 
Vendemer's  book  he  came  back  to  tell  me 
that  he  found  great  beauty  in  it.  "  It  speaks 
to  me — it  speaks  to  me,"  he  said,  with  his 
air  of  happy  proof.  "  I  liked  the  songs — I 
liked  the  songs.  Besides,"  he  added,  "  I 
like  the  little  romantic  play — it  has  given 
me  wonderful  ideas  ;  more  ideas  than  any 
thing  has  done  for  a  long  time.  Yes — yes." 

"What  kind  of  ideas?" 

"Well,  this  kind."  And  he  sat  down  to 
the  piano  and  struck  the  keys.  I  listened 


126  COLLABORATION 

without  more  questions,  and  after  a  while  I 
began  to  understand.  Suddenly  he  said, 
"  Do  you  know  the  words  of  Mat?"  and  be 
fore  I  could  answer  he  was  rolling  out  one 
of  the  lyrics  of  the  little  volume.  The  poem 
was  strange  and  obscure,  yet  irresistibly 
beautiful,  and  he  had  translated  it  into 
music  still  more  tantalizing  than  itself.  He 
sounded  the  words  with  his  German  accent, 
barely  perceptible  in  English,  but  strongly 
marked  in  French.  He  dropped  them  and 
took  them  up  again ;  he  was  playing  with 
them,  feeling  his  way.  "  This  is  my  idea !" 
he  broke  out ;  he  had  caught  it,  in  one  of  its 
mystic  mazes,  and  he  rendered  it  with  a 
kind  of  solemn  freshness.  There  was  a 
phrase  he  repeated,  trying  it  again  and 
again,  and  while  he  did  so  he  chanted  the 
words  of  the  song  as  if  they  were  an  illumi 
nating  flame,  an  inspiration.  I  was  rather 
glad  on  the  whole  that  Vendemer  didn't 
hear  what  his  pronunciation  made  of  them, 
but  as  I  was  in  the  very  act  of  rejoicing  I 
became  aware  that  the  author  of  the  verses 
had  opened  the  door.  He  had  pushed  it 
gently,  hearing  the  music  ;  then  hearing  also 


COLLABORATION  127 

his  own  poetry  he  had  paused  and  stood 
looking  at  Heidenmauer.  The  young  Ger 
man  nodded  and  laughed  and,  ineffectively, 
spontaneously,  greeted  him  with  a  friendly 
"  Was  sagen  Sie  dazu  ?"  I  saw  Vendemer 
change  color ;  he  blushed  red,  and,  for  an 
instant,  as  he  stood  wavering,  I  thought  he 
was  going  to  retreat.  But  I  beckoned  him 
in,  and  on  the  divan  beside  me  patted  a 
place  for  him  to  sit. 

He  came  in,  but  didn't  take  this  place ; 
he  went  and  stood  before  the  fire  to  warm 
his  feet,  turning  his  back  to  us.  Heiden 
mauer  played  and  played,  and  after  a  little 
Vendemer  turned  round ;  he  looked  about 
him  for  a  seat,  dropped  into  it,  and  sat  with 
his  elbows  on  his  knees  and  his  head  in 
his  hands.  Presently  Heidenmauer  called 
out,  in  French,  above  the  music,  "  I  like 
your  songs — I  like  them  immensely  !"  but 
the  young  Frenchman  neither  spoke  nor 
moved.  When,  however,  five  minutes  later 
Heidenmauer  stopped,  he  sprang  up  with 
an  entreaty  to  him  to  go  on,  to  go  on,  for 
the  love  of  God.  "Foil*— -foila  /"  cried  the 
musician,  and  with  hands  for  an  instant  sus- 


128  COLLABORATION 

pended  he  wandered  off  into  mysterious 
worlds.  He  played  Wagner,  and  then  Wag 
ner  again — a  great  deal  of  WTagner  ;  in  the 
midst  of  which,  abruptly,  he  addressed  him 
self  again  to  Vendemer,  who  had  gone  still 
farther  from  the  piano,  launching  to  me, 
however,  from  his  corner  a  "  Dieu,  que  c*est 
beau  /"  which  I  saw  that  Heidenmauer 
caught.  "  I've  a  conception  for  an  opera, 
you  know — I'd  give  anything  if  you'd  do  the 
libretto !"  Our  German  friend  laughed  out, 
after  this,  with  clear  good -nature,  and  the 
rich  appeal  brought  Vendemer  slowly  to  his 
feet  again,  staring  at  the  musician  across  the 
room  and  turning  this  time  perceptibly  pale. 

I  felt  there  was  a  drama  in  the  air,  and  it 
made  me  a  little  nervous  ;  to  conceal  which  I 
said  to  Heidenmauer  :  "  What's  your  con 
ception  ?  What's  your  subject  ?" 

"  My  conception  would  be  realized  in  the 
subject  of  M.  Vendemer's  play — if  he'll  do 
that  for  me  in  a  great  lyric  manner !"  And 
with  this  the  young  German,  who  had  stopped 
playing  to  answer  me,  quitted  the  piano,  and 
Vendemer  got  up  to  meet  him.  "The  sub 
ject  is  splendid — it  has  taken  possession  of 


COLLABORATION 


129 


me.  Will  you  do  it  with  me  ?  Will  you 
work  with  me  ?  We  shall  make  something 
great !" 

"  Ah,  you  don't  know  what  you  ask  !" 
Vendemer  answered,  with  his  pale  smile. 

"  I  do — I  do  ;  I've  thought  of  it.  It  will 
be  bad  for  me  in  my  country ;  I  shall  suffer 
for  it.  They  won't  like  it — they'll  abuse 
me  for  it  —  they'll  say  of  me  pis  que 
pendre."  Heidenmauer  pronounced  it  bis 
que  bendre. 

"They'll  hate  my  libretto  so?"  Vendemer 
asked. 

"Yes,  your  libretto — they'll  say  it's  im 
moral  and  horrible.  And  they'll  say  /';;/ 
immoral  and  horrible  for  having  worked 
with  you,"  the  young  composer  went  on, 
with  his  pleasant,  healthy  lucidity.  "  You'll 
injure  my  career.  Oh  yes,  I  shall  suffer !" 
he  joyously,  exultingly  cried. 

"  Et  moi  done  T  Vendemer  exclaimed. 

"  Public  opinion,  yes.  I  shall  also  make 
you  suffer — I  shall  nip  your  prosperity  in 
the  bud.  All  that's  des  bttises — tes  petisses" 
said  poor  Heidenmauer.  "  In  art  there  are 
no  countries." 


130  COLLABORATION 

"Yes,  art  is  terrible,  art  is  monstrous," 
Vendemer  replied,  looking  at  the  fire. 

"  I  love  your  songs — they  have  extraor 
dinary  beauty." 

"  And  Vendemer  has  an  equal  taste  for 
your  compositions,"  I  said  to  Heidenmauer. 

"  Tempter  !"  Vendemer  murmured  to  me, 
with  a  strange  look. 

"C'est  juste!  I  must'nt  meddle  —  which 
will  be  all  the  easier  as  I'm  dining  out  and 
must  go  and  dress.  You  two  make  your 
selves  at  home  and  fight  it  out  here." 

"  Do  you  leave  me  ?"  asked  Vendemer, 
still  with  his  strange  look. 

"  My  dear  fellow,  I've  only  just  time." 

"  We  will  dine  together — he  and  I — at 
one  of  those  characteristic  places,  and  we 
will  look  at  the  matter  in  its  different  re 
lations,"  said  Heidenmauer.  "Then  we  will 
come  back  here  to  finish — your  studio  is  so 
good  for  music." 

"There  are  some  things  it  wwVgood  for," 
Vendemer  remarked,  looking  at  our  com 
panion, 

"  It's  good  for  poetry — it's  good  for  truth," 
smiled  the  composer. 


COLLABORATION  131 

"  You'll  stay  here  and  dine  together,"  I 
said;  "my  servant  can  manage  that." 

"  No,  no — we'll  go  out  and  we'll  walk  to 
gether.  We'll  talk  a  great  deal,"  Heiden- 
mauer  went  on.  "  The  subject  is  so  com 
prehensive,"  he  said  to  Vendemer,  as  he 
lighted  another  cigar. 

"  The  subject  ?" 

"Of  your  drama.     It's  so  universal." 

"Ah,  the  universe — //  riy  a  qne  fa /"  I 
laughed,  to  Vendemer,  partly  with  a  seally 
amused  sense  of  the  exaggerated  woe  that 
looked  out  of  his  poetic  eyes  and  that 
seemed  an  appeal  to  me  not  to  forsake  him, 
to  throw  myself  into  the  scale  of  the  asso 
ciations  he  would  have  to  stifle,  and  partly 
to  encourage  him,  to  express  my  conviction 
that  two  such  fine  minds"  couldn't  in  the 
long  run  be  the  worse  for  coming  to  an 
agreement  I  might  have  been  a  more 
mocking  Mephistopheles  handing  over  his 
pure  spirit  to  my  literally  German  Faust. 

When  I  came  home  at  eleven  o'clock  I 
found  him  alone  in  my  studio,  where, 
evidently,  for  some  time,  he  had  been 
moving  up  and  down  in  agitated  thought. 


132  COLLABORATION 

The  air  was  thick  with  Bavarian  fumes, 
with  the  reverberation  of  mighty  music  and 
great  ideas,  with  the  echoes  of  that  "uni 
verse  "  to  which  I  had  so  mercilessly  con 
signed  him.  But  I  judged  in  a  moment 
that  Vendemer  was  in  a  very  different  phase 
of  his  evolution  from  the  one  in  which  I 
had  left  him.  I  had  never  seen  his  hand 
some,  sensitive  face  so  intensely  illumined. 

"  Qa  y  est — fa  y  est  /"  he  exclaimed,  stand 
ing  there  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets 
and  looking  at  me. 

"You've  really  agreed  to  do  something 
together  ?" 

"  We've  sworn  a  tremendous  oath — we've 
taken  a  sacred  engagement." 

"  My  dear  fellow,  you're  a  hero." 

"  Wait  and  see !  C  'est  tin  t res-grand 
esprit." 

"  So  much  the  better  !" 

"  C'est  un  bien  beau  genie.  Ah,  we've 
risen  —  we  soar ;  nous  sommes  dans  les 
grandes  espaces  /"  my  friend  continued,  with 
his  dilated  eyes. 

"  It's  very  interesting — because  it  will 
cost  you  something." 


COLLABORATION 


133 


"  It  will  cost  me  everything !"  said  Felix 
Vendemer,  in  a  tone  I  seem  to  hear  at  this 
hour.  "  That's  just  the  beauty  of  it.  It's 
the  chance  of  chances  to  testify  for  art — to 
affirm  an  indispensable  truth." 

"  An  indispensable  truth  ?"  I  repeated, 
feeling  myself  soar,  too,  but  into  the  splen 
did  vague. 

"  Do  you  know  the  greatest  crime  that 
can  be  perpetrated  against  it  ?" 

"Against  it?"  I  asked,  still  soaring. 

"  Against  the  religion  of  art,  against  the 
love  for  beauty,  against  the  search  for  the 
Holy  Grail  ?"  The  transfigured  look  with 
which  he  named  these  things,  the  way  his 
warm  voice  filled  the  rich  room,  was  a  rev 
elation  of  the  wonderful  talk  that  had 
taken  place. 

"  Do  you  know — for  one  of  us — the  really 
damnable,  the  only  unpardonable,  sin  ?" 

"  Tell  me,  so  that  I  may  keep  clear 
of  it !" 

"  To  profane  our  golden  air  with  the 
hideous  invention  of  patriotism." 

"  It  was  a  clever  invention  in  its  time  !" 
I  laughed. 


134  COLLABORATION 

"  I'm  not  talking  about  its  time — I'm 
talking  about  its  place.  It  was  never  any 
thing  but  a  fifth-rate  impertinence  here.  In 
art  there  are  no  countries  —  no  idiotic 
nationalities,  no  frontiers,  nor  douanes,  nor 
still  more  idiotic  fortresses  and  bayonets.  It 
has  the  unspeakable  beauty  of  being  the 
region  in  which  those  abominations  cease, 
the  medium  in  which  such  vulgarities 
simply  can't  live.  What,  therefore,  are  we 
to  say  of  the  brutes  who  wish  to  drag  them 
all  in — to  crush  to  death  with  them  all  the 
flowers  of  such  a  garden,  to  shut  out  all  the 
light  of  such  a  sky  ?"  I  was  far  from  desir 
ing  to  defend  the  "  brutes "  in  question, 
though  there  rose  before  me  even  at  that 
moment  a  sufficiently  vivid  picture  of  the 
way,  later  on,  poor  Vendemer  would  have 
to  face  them.  I  quickly  perceived,  indeed, 
that  the  picture  was,  to  his  own  eyes,  a  still 
more  crowded  canvas.  Felix  Vendemer, 
in  the  centre  of  it,  was  an  admirable,  a 
really  sublime  figure.  If  there  had  been 
wonderful  talk  after  I  quitted  the  two  poets, 
the  wonder  was  not  over  yet — it  went  on 
far  into  the  night  for  my  benefit.  We 


COLLABORATION  135 

looked  at  the  prospect  in  many  lights, 
turned  the  subject  about  almost  every  way 
it  would  go  ;  but  I  am  bound  to  say  there 
was  one  relation  in  which  we  tacitly  agreed 
to  forbear  to  consider  it.  We  neither  of 
us  uttered  the  name  of  Paule  de  Brindes — 
the  outlook  in  that  direction  would  be  too 
serious.  And  yet  if  Felix  Vendemer,  ex 
quisite  and  incorruptible  artist  that  he  was, 
had  fallen  in  love  with  the  idea  of  "  testify 
ing,"  it  was  from  that  direction  that  the 
finest  part  of  his  opportunity  to  do  so  would 
proceed. 

I  was  only  too  conscious  of  this  when, 
within  the  week,  I  received  a  hurried  note 
from  Madame'  de  Brindes,  begging  me,  as  a 
particular  favor,  to  come  and  see  her  with 
out  delay.  I  had  not  seen  Vendemer 
again,  but  I  had  had  a  characteristic  call 
from  Heidenmauer,  who,  though  I  could 
imagine  him  perfectly  in  a  Prussian  helmet, 
with  a  needle-gun,  perfectly,  on  definite  oc 
casion,  a  sturdy,  formidable  soldier,  gave 
me  a  renewed  impression  of  inhabiting,  in 
the  expansion  of  his  genius  and  the  exer 
cise  of  his  intelligence,  no  land  of  red  tape, 


136  COLLABORATION 

no  province  smaller  nor  more  pedantically 
administered  than  the  totality  of  things.  I 
was  reminded  afresh  too  that  he  foresaw  no 
striking  salon-picture,  no  chic  of  execution 
nor  romance  of  martyrdom,  or  at  any  rate 
devoted  very  little  time  to  the  considera 
tion  of  such  objects.  He  doubtless  did 
scant  justice  to  poor  Vendemer's  attitude, 
though  he  said  to  me  of  him,  by-the-way, 
with  his  rosy  deliberation  :  "He  has  good 
ideas — he  has  good  ideas.  The  French 
mind  has,  for  me,  the  taste  of  a  very  de 
lightful  bon-bon !"  He  only  measured  the 
angle  of  convergence,  as  he  called  it,  of 
their  two  projections.  He  was,  in  short,  not 
preoccupied  with  the  personal  gallantry  of 
their  experiment ;  he  was  preoccupied  with 
its  "aesthetic  and  harmonic  basis." 

It  was  without  her  daughter  that  Madame 
de  Brindes  received  me,  when  I  obeyed  her 
summons,  in  her  scrap  of  a  quatrieme  in  the 
Rue  de  Miromesnil. 

"  Ah,  cher  monsieur,  how  could  you  have 
permitted  such  a  horror — how  could  you 
have  given  it  the  countenance  of  your  roof, 
of  your  influence  ?"  There  were  tears  in 


COLLABORATION 


137 


her  eyes,  and  I  don't  think  that  for  the 
moment  I  have  ever  been  more  touched  by 
a  reproach.  But  I  pulled  myself  together 
sufficiently  to  affirm  my  faith  as  well  as  to 
disengage  my  responsibility.  I  explained 
that  there  was  no  horror  to  me  in  the  mat 
ter,  that  if  I  was  not.  a  German  neither  was 
I  a  Frenchman,  and  that  all  I  had  before 
me  was  two  young  men  inflamed  by  a  great 
idea  and  nobly  determined  to  work  together 
to  give  it  a  great  form. 

"A  great  idea — to  go  over  to  ces gens-la?" 

"To  go  over  to  them  ?" 

"To  put  yourself  on  their  side — to  throw 
yourself  into  the  arms  of  those  who  hate  us 
— to  fall  into  their  abominable  trap  !" 

"What  do  you  call  their  abominable 
trap  ?" 

"  Their  false  bonhomie,  the  very  impu 
dence  of  their  intrigues,  their  profound, 
scientific  deceit,  and  their  determination  to 
get  the  advantage  of  us  by  exploiting  our 
generosity." 

"You  attribute  to  such  a  man  as  Heiden- 
mauer  too  many  motives  and  too  many  cal 
culations.  He's  quite  ideally  superior  !" 


138  COLLABORATION 

"Oh,  German  idealism — we  know  what 
that  means !  We've  no  use  for  their  supe 
riority;  let  them  carry  it  elsewhere — let  them 
leave  us  alone.  Why  do  they  thrust  them 
selves  in  upon  us  and  set  old  wounds 
throbbing  by  their  detested  presence  ?  We 
don't  go  near  them,  or  ever  wish  to  hear 
their  ugly  names  or  behold  their  visages  de 
bois ;  therefore  the  most  rudimentary  good 
taste,  the  tact  one  would  expect  even  from 
naked  savages,  might  suggest  to  them  to 
seek  their  amusements  elsewhere.  But 
their  taste,  their  tact — I  can  scarcely  trust 
myself  to  speak  !" 

Madame  de  Brindes  did  speak,  however, 
at  considerable  further  length  and  with  a  sin 
cerity  of  passion  which  left  one  quite  without 
arguments.  There  was  no  argument  to  meet 
the  fact  that  Vendemer's  attitude  wounded 
her,  wounded  her  daughter,  jusqu"1  au  fond 
de  I'dme,  that  it  represented  for  them 
abysses  of  shame  and  suffering,  and  that 
for  himself  it  meant  a  whole  future  com 
promised,  a  whole  public  alienated.  It  was 
vain,  doubtless,  to  talk  of  such  things ;  if 
people  didn't  feel  them,  if  they  hadn't  the 


COLLABORATION  139 

fibre  of  loyalty,  the  high  imagination  of 
honor,  all  explanations,  all  supplications 
were  but  a  waste  of  noble  emotion.  M. 
Vendemer's  perversity  was  monstrous — she 
had  had  a  sickening  discussion  with  him. 
What  she  desired  of  me  was  to  make  one 
last  appeal  to  him,  to  put  the  solemn  truth 
before  him,  to  try  to  bring  him  back  to 
sanity.  It  was  as  if  he  had  temporarily 
lost  his  reason.  It  was  to  be  made  clear  to 
him,  par  exemple,  that  unless  he  should  re 
cover  it  Mademoiselle  de  Brindes  would 
unhesitatingly  withdraw  from  her  engage 
ment. 

"  Does  she  really  feel  as  you  do  ?"  I 
asked. 

"Do  you  think  I  put  words  into  her 
mouth  ?  She  feels  as  a  fille  de  France  is 
obliged  to  feel !" 

"  Doesn't  she  love  him  then  ?" 

"  She  adores  him.  But  she  won't  take 
him  without  his  honor." 

"  I  don't  understand  such  refinements  !" 
I  said. 

"Oh,  vous  autres /"  cried  Madame  de 
Brindes.  Then  with  eyes  glowing  through 


140  COLLABORATION 

her  tears  she  demanded  :  "  Don't  you  know 
she  knows  how  her  father  died  ?"  I  was  on 
the  point  of  saying,  "What  has  that  to  do 
with  it?"  but  I  withheld  the  question,  for, 
after  all,  I  could  conceive  that  it  might  have 
something.  There  was  no  disputing  about 
tastes,  and  I  could  only  express  my  sincere 
conviction  that  Vendemer  was  profoundly 
attached  to  Mademoiselle  Paule.  "Then 
let  him  prove  it  by  making  her  a  sacrifice !" 
my  strenuous  hostess  replied ;  to  which  I 
rejoined  that  I  would  repeat  our  conversa 
tion  to  him  and  put  the  matter  before  him 
as  strongly  as  I  could.  I  delayed  a  little 
to  take  leave,  wondering  if  the  girl  would 
not  come  in — I  should  have  been  so  much 
more  content  to  receive  her  strange  recan 
tation  from  her  own  lips.  I  couldn't  say 
this  to  Madame  de  Erindes;  but  she 
guessed  I  meant  it,  and  before  we  sep 
arated  we  exchanged  a  look  in  which  our 
mutual  mistrust  was  written — the  suspicion 
on  her  side  that  I  should  not  be  a  very 
passionate  intercessor  and  the  conjecture 
on  mine  that  she  might  be  misrepresenting 
her  daughter.  This  slight  tension,  I  must 


COLLABORATION  141 

add,  was  only  momentary,  for  I  have  had  a 
chance  of  observing  Paule  de  Brindes  since 
then,  and  the  two  ladies  were  soon  satisfied 
that  I  pitied  them  enough  to  have  been 
eloquent. 

My  eloquence  has  been  of  no  avail,  and 
I  have  learned  (it  has  been  one  of  the  most 
interesting  lessons  of  my  life)  of  what  tran 
scendent  stuff  the  artist  may  sometimes  be 
made.  Herman  Heidenmauer  and  Felix 
Vendemer  are,  at  the  hour  I  write,  immersed 
in  their  monstrous  collaboration.  There 
were  postponements  and  difficulties  at  first, 
and  there  will  be  more  serious  ones  in  the 
future,  when  it  is  a  question  of  giving  the 
finished  work  to  the  world.  The  world  of 
Paris  will  stop  its  ears  in  horror,  the  Ger 
man  Empire  will  turn  its  mighty  back,  and 
the  authors  of  what  I  foresee  (oh,  I've  been 
treated  to  specimens !)  as  a  perhaps  really 
epoch-making,  musical  revelation  (is  Heid- 
enmauer's  style  rubbing  off  on  me  ?)  will 
perhaps  have  to  beg  for  a  hearing  in  com 
munities  fatally  unintelligent.  It  may  very 
well  be  that  they  will  not  obtain  any  hear 
ing  at  all  for  years.  I  like,  at  any  rate,  to 


I42  COLLABORATION 

think  that  time  works  for  them.  At  present 
they  work  for  themselves  and  for  each  other, 
amid  drawbacks  of  several  kinds.  Separat 
ing  after  the  episode  in  Paris,  they  have  met 
again  on  alien  soil,  at  a  little  place  on  the 
Genoese  Riviera,  where  sunshine  is  cheap 
and  tobacco  bad,  and  they  live  (the  two  to 
gether)  for  five  francs  a  day,  which  is  all  they 
can  muster  between  them.  It  appears  that 
when  Heidenmauer's  London  step-brother 
was  informed  of  the  young  composer's  un 
natural  alliance  he  instantly  withdrew  his 
subsidy.  The  return  of  it  is  contingent  on 
the  rupture  of  the  unholy  union  and  the  de 
struction  by  flame  of  all  the  manuscript. 
The  pair  are  very  poor,  and  the  whole  thing 
depends  on  their  staying  power.  They  are 
so  preoccupied  with  their  opera  that  they 
have  no  time  for  pot-boilers.  Vendemer  is 
in  a  feverish  hurry,  lest  perhaps  he  should 
find  himself  chilled.  There  are  still  other 
details  which  contribute  to  the  interest  of 
the  episode,  and  which,  for  me,  help  to  ren 
der  it  a  most  refreshing,  a  really  great  little 
case.  It  rests  me,  it  delights  me,  there  is 
something  in  it  that  makes  for  civilization. 


COLLABORATION  143 

In  their  way  they  are  working  for  human 
happiness.  The  strange  course  taken  by 
Vendemer  (I  mean  his  renunciation  of  his 
engagement)  must,  moreover,  be  judged  in 
the  light  of  the  fact  that  he  was  really  in 
love.  Something  had  to  be  sacrificed,  and 
what  he  clung  to  most  (he's  extraordinary,  I 
admit)  was  the  truth  he  had  the  opportuni 
ty  of  proclaiming.  Men  give  up  their  love 
for  advantages  every  day,  but  they  rarely 
give  it  up  for  such  discomforts. 

Paule  de  Brindes  was  the  less  in  love  of 
the  two ;  I  see  her  often  enough  to  have 
made  up  my  mind  about  that.  But  she's 
mysterious,  she's  odd ;  there  was,  at  any 
rate,  a  sufficient  wrench  in  her  life  to  make 
her  often  absent-minded.  Does  her  imagi 
nation  hover  about  Felix  Vendemer?  A 
month  ago,  going  into  their  rooms  one  day 
when  her  mother  was  not  at  home  (the  bonne 
had  admitted  me  under  a  wrong  impression) 
I  found  her  at  the  piano,  playing  one  of  Hei- 
denmauer's  compositions — playing  it  with 
out  notes  and  with  infinite  expression.  How 
had  she  got  hold  of  it  ?  How  had  she  learn 
ed  it  ?  This  was  her  secret — she  blushed  so 


144 


COLLABORATION 


that  I  didn't  pry  into  it.  But  what  is  she 
doing,  under  the  singular  circumstances, 
with  a  composition  of  Herman  Heiden- 
mauer's  ?  She  never  met  him,  she  never 
heard  him  play,  but  that  once.  It  will  be 
a  pretty  complication  if  it  shall  appear  that 
the  young  German  genius  made  on  that  oc 
casion  more  than  one  intense  impression. 
This  needn't  appear,  however,  inasmuch  as, 
being  naturally  in  terror  of  the  discovery  by 
her  mother  of  such  an  anomaly,  she  may 
count  on  me  absolutely  not  to  betray  her. 
I  hadn't  fully  perceived  how  deeply  suscep 
tible  she  is  to  music.  She  must  have  a 
strange  confusion  of  feelings — a  dim,  haunt 
ing  trouble,  with  a  kind  of  ache  of  impa 
tience  for  the  wonderful  opera  somewhere 
in  the  depths  of  it.  Don't  we  live  fast, 
after  all,  and  doesn't  the  old  order  change  ? 
Don't  say  art  isn't  mighty  !  I  shall  give 
you  some  more  illustrations  of  it  yet. 


OWEN   WINGRAVE 


OWEN  WINGRAVE 
I 

"UPON  my  honor,  you  must  be  off  your 
head!"  cried  Spencer  Coyle,  as  the  young 
man,  with  a  white  face,  stood  there  panting 
a  little,  and  repeating,  "  Really,  I've  quite 
decided,"  and  "  I  assure  you  I've  thought 
it  all  out."  They  were  both  pale,  but  Owen 
Wingrave  smiled  in  a  manner  exasperating 
to  his  interlocutor,  who,  however,  still  dis 
criminated  sufficiently  to  see  that  his  gri 
mace  (it  was  like  an  irrelevant  leer)  was 
the  result  of  extreme  and  conceivable  nerv 
ousness. 

"  It  was  certainly  a  mistake  to  have  gone 
so  far;  but  that  is  exactly  why  I  feel  I 
mustn't  go  farther,"  poor  Owen  said,  wait 
ing  mechanically,  almost  humbly  (he  wished 
not  to  swagger,  and  indeed  he  had  nothing 


148  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

to  swagger  about),  and  carrying  through  the 
window  to  the  stupid  opposite  houses  the 
dry  glitter  of  his  eyes. 

"  I'm  unspeakably  disgusted.  You've 
made  me  dreadfully  ill,"  Mr.  Coyle  went 
on,  looking  thoroughly  upset. 

"  I'm  very  sorry.  It  was  the  fear  of  the 
effect  on  you  that  kept  me  from  speaking 
sooner." 

"You  should  have  spoken  three  months 
ago.  Don't  you  know  your  mind  from  one 
day  to  the  other  ?" 

The  young  man  for  a  moment  said  noth 
ing.  Then  he  replied,  with  a  little  tremor  : 
"  You're  very  angry  with  me,  and  I  expect 
ed  it.  I'm  awfully  obliged  to  you  for  all 
you've  done  for  me.  I'll  do  anything  else 
for  you  in  return,  but  I  can't  do  that.  Ev 
ery  one  else  will  let  me  have  it,  of  course. 
I'm  prepared  for  it — I'm  prepared  for  every 
thing.  That's  what  has  taken  the  time  :  to 
be  sure  I  was  prepared.  I  think  it's  your 
displeasure  I  feel  most  and  regret  most. 
But,  little  by  little,  you'll  get  over  it." 

"You'll  get  over  it  rather  faster,  I  sup 
pose  !"  Spencer  Coyle  satirically  exclaimed. 


OWEN    WINGRAVE 


149 


He  was  quite  as  agitated  as  his  young 
friend,  and  they  were  evidently  in  no  con 
dition  to  prolong  an  encounter  in  which 
they  each  drew  blood.  Mr.  Coyle  was  a 
professional  "coach;"  he  prepared  young 
men  for  the  army,  taking  only  three  or  four 
at  a  time,  to  whom  he  applied  the  irresisti 
ble  stimulus  of  which  the  possession  was 
both  his  secret  and  his  fortune.  He  had 
not  a  great  establishment;  he  would  have 
said  himself  that  it  was  not  a  wholesale 
business.  Neither  his  system,  his  health, 
nor  his  temper  could  have  accommodated 
itself  to  numbers  ;  so  he  weighed  and  meas 
ured  his  pupils,  and  turned  away  more  ap 
plicants  than  he  passed.  He  was. an  artist 
in  his  line,  caring  only  for  picked  subjects, 
and  capable  of  sacrifices  almost  passionate 
for  the  individual.  He  liked  ardent  young 
men  (there  were  kinds  of  capacity  to  which 
he  was  indifferent),  and  he  had  taken  a 
particular  fancy  to  Owen  Wingrave.  This 
young  man's  facility  really  fascinated  him. 
His  candidates  usually  did  wonders,  and  he 
might  have  sent  up  a  multitude.  He  was  a 
person  of  exactly  the  stature  of  the  great 


1 5o  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

Napoleon,  with  a  certain  flicker  of  genius 
in  his  light  blue  eye  .•  it  had  been  said  of 
him  that  he  looked  like  a  pianist.  The  tone 
of  his  favorite  pupil  now  expressed  (without 
intention,  indeed)  a  superior  wisdom,  which 
irritated  him.  He  had  not  especially  suf 
fered  before  from  Wingrave's  high  opinion 
of  himself,  which  had  seemed  justified  by 
remarkable  parts ;  but  to-day  it  struck  him 
as  intolerable.  He  cut  short  the  discussion, 
declining  absolutely  to  regard  their  relations 
as  terminated,  and  remarked  to  his  pupil 
that  he  had  better  go  off  somewhere  (down 
to  Eastbourne,  say,  the  sea  would  bring 
him  round)  and  take  a  few  days  to  find  his 
feet  and  pome  to  his  senses.  He  could  af 
ford  the  time,  he  was  so  well  up  —  when 
Spencer  Coyle  remembered  how  well  up  he 
was  he  could  have  boxed  his  ears.  The 
tall,  athletic  young  man  was  not  physically 
a  subject  for  simplified  reasoning  ;  but  there 
was  a  troubled  gentleness  in  his  handsome 
face,  the  index  of  compunction  mixed  with 
pertinacity,  which  signified  that  if  it  could 
have  done  any  good  he  would  have  turned 
both  cheeks.  He  evidently  didn't  pretend 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  151 

that  his  wisdom  was  superior ;  he  only  pre 
sented  it  as  his  own.  It  was  his  own  ca 
reer,  after  all,  that  was  in  question.  He 
couldn't  refuse  to  go  through  the  form  of 
trying  Eastbourne,  or  at  least  of  holding  his 
tongue,  though  there  was  that  in  his  man 
ner  which  implied  that  if  he  should  do  so  it 
would  be  really  to  give  Mr.  Coyle  a  chance 
to  recuperate.  He  didn't  feel  a  bit  over 
worked,  but  there  was  nothing  more  natural 
than  that,  with  their  tremendous  pressure, 
Mr.  Coyle  should  be.  Mr.  Coyle's  own  in 
tellect  would  derive  an  advantage  from  his 
pupil's  holiday.  Mr.  Coyle  saw  what  he 
meant,  but  he  controlled  himself;  he  only 
demanded,  as  his  right,  a  truce  of  three 
days.  Owen  Wingrave  granted  it,  though, 
as  fostering  sad  illusions,  this  went  vis 
ibly  against  his  conscience ;  but  before 
they  separated  the  famous  crammer  re 
marked  :  , 

"  All  the  same,  I  feel  as  if  I  ought  to  see 
some  one.  I  think  you  mentioned  to  me 
that  your  aunt  had  come  to  town  ?" 

"  Oh  yes  ;  she's  in  Baker  Street.  Do  go 
and  see  her,"  the  boy  said,  comfortingly. 


152  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

Mr.  Coyle  looked  at  him  an  instant. 
"  Have  you  broached  this  folly  to  her  ?" 

"  Not  yet — to  no  one.  I  thought  it  right 
to  speak  to  you  first." 

"  Oh,  what  you  '  think  right !' "  cried  Spen 
cer  Coyle,  outraged  by  his  young  friend's 
standards.  He  added  that  he  would  proba 
bly  call  on  Miss  Wingrave  ;  after  which  the 
recreant  youth  got  out  of  the  honse. 

Owen  Wingrave  didn't  however  start 
punctually  for  Eastbourne;  he  only  direct 
ed  his  steps  to  Kensington  Gardens,  from 
which  Mr.  Coyle's  desirable  residence  (he 
was  terribly  expensive  and  had  a  big  house) 
was  not  far  removed.  The  famous  coach 
"put  up  "  his  pupils,  and  Owen  had  men 
tioned  to  the  butler  that  he  would  be  back 
to  dinner.  The  spring  day  was  warm  to  his 
young  blood,  and  he  had  a  book  in  his 
pocket  which,  when  he  had  passed  into  the 
gardens,  and,  after  a  short  stroll,  dropped 
into  a  chair,  he  took  out  with  the  slow,  soft 
sigh  that  finally  ushers  in  a  pleasure  post 
poned.  He  stretched  his  long  legs  and 
began  to  read  it ;  it  was  a  volume  of 
Goethe's  poems.  He  had  been  for  days  in 


OWEN   WINGRAVE 


153 


a  state  of  the  highest  tension,  and  now  that 
the  cord  had  snapped  the  relief  was  propor 
tionate;  only  it  was  characteristic  of  him 
that  this  deliverance  should  take  the  form 
of  an  intellectual  pleasure.  If  he  had  thrown 
up  the  probability  of  a  magnificent  career, 
it  was  not  to  dawdle  along  Bond  Street  nor 
parade  his  indifference  in  the  window  of  a 
club.  At  any  rate,  he  had  in  a  few  mo 
ments  forgotten  everything  —  the  tremend 
ous  pressure,  Mr.  Coyle's  disappointment, 
and  even  his  formidable  aunt  in  Baker 
Street.  If  these  watchers  had  overtaken 
him  there  would  surely  have  been  some  ex 
cuse  for  their  exasperation.  There  was  no 
doubt  he  was  perverse,  for  his  very  choice 
of  a  pastime  only  showed  how  he  had  got  up 
his  German. 

"What  the  devil's  the  matter  with  him, 
do  you  know?"  Spencer  Coyle  asked  that 
afternoon  of  young  Lechmere,  who  had 
never  before  observed  the  head  of  the  es 
tablishment  to  set  a  fellow  such  an  example 
of  bad  language.  Young  Lechmere  was 
not  only  Wingrave's  fellow -pupil,  he  was 
supposed  to  be  his  intimate,  indeed  quite 


154  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

his  best  friend,  and  had  unconsciously  per 
formed  for  Mr.  Coyle  the  office  of  making 
the  promise  of  his  great  gifts  more  vivid  by 
contrast.  He  was  short  and  sturdy,  and,  as 
a  general  thing,  uninspired,  and  Mr.  Coyle, 
who  found  no  amusement  in  believing  in 
him,  had  never  thought  him  less  exciting 
than  as  he  stared  now  out  of  a  face  from 
which  you  could  never  guess  whether  he 
had  caught  an  idea.  Young  Lechmere  con 
cealed  such  achievements  as  if  they  had 
been  youthful  indiscretions.  At  any  rate 
he  could  evidently  conceive  no  reason  why 
it  should  be  thought  there  was  anything 
more  than  usual  the  matter  with  the  com 
panion  of  his  studies ;  so  Mr.  Coyle  had  to 
continue : 

"  He  declines  to  go  up.  He  chucks  the 
whole  thing !" 

The  first  thing  that  struck  young  Lech- 
mere  in  the  case  was  the  freshness  it  had 
imparted  to  the  governor's  vocabulary. 

"  He  doesn't  want  to  go  to  Sandhurst  ?" 

"  He  doesn't  want  to  go  anywhere.  He 
gives  up  the  army  altogether.  He  objects," 
said  Mr.  Coyle,  in  a  tone  that  made  young 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  155 

Lechmere  almost  hold  his  breath,  "to  the 
military  profession." 

"Why,  it  has  been  the  profession  of  all 
his  family !" 

"  Their  profession  ?  It  has  been  their  re 
ligion  !  Do  you  know  Miss  Wingrave  ?" 

"  Oh  yes.  Isn't  she  awful  ?"  young  Lech- 
mere  candidly  ejaculated. 

His  instructor  demurred. 

"  She's  formidable,  if  you  mean  that,  and 
it's  right  she  should  be ;  because  somehow 
in  her  very  person,  good  maiden  lady  as 
she  is,  she  represents  the  might,  she  repre 
sents  the  traditions  and  the  exploits  of  the 
British  army.  She  represents  the  expan 
sive  property  of  the  English  name.  I  think 
his  family  can  be  trusted  to  come  down  on 
him,  but  every  influence  should  be  set  in 
motion.  I  want  to  know  what  yours  is. 
Can  you  do  anything  in  the  matter  ?" 

"  I  can  try  a  couple  of  rounds  with  him," 
said  young  Lechmere,  reflectively.  "  But  he 
knows  a  fearful  lot.  He  has  the  most  ex 
traordinary  ideas." 

"Then  he  has  told  you  some  of  them — 
he  has  taken  you  into  his  confidence  ?" 


156  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

"  I've  heard  him  jaw  by  the  yard,"  smiled 
the  honest  youth.  "  He  has  told  me  he 
despises  it." 

"  What  is  it  he  despises  ?  I  can't  make 
out." 

The  most  consecutive  of  Mr.  Coyle's 
nurslings  considered  a  moment,  as  if  he 
were  conscious  of  a  responsibility. 

"Why,  I  think,  military  glory.  He  says 
we  take  the  wrong  view  of  it." 

"  He  oughtn't  to  talk  to  you  that  way. 
It's  corrupting  the  youth  of  Athens.  It's 
sowing  sedition." 

"  Oh,  I'm  all  right !"  said  young  Lech- 
mere.  "  And  he  never  told  me  he  meant  to 
chuck  it.  I  always  thought  he  meant  to  see 
it  through,  simply  because  he  had  to.  He'll 
argue  on  any  side  you  like.  It's  a  tremen 
dous  pity — I'm  sure  he'd  have  a  big  career." 

"  Tell  him  so,  then ;  plead  with  him ; 
struggle  with  him— for  God's  sake  !" 

"  I'll  do  what  I  can  —  I'll  tell  him  it's  a 
regular  shame." 

"  Yes,  strike  that  note — insist  on  the  dis 
grace  of  it." 

The  young  man  gave  Mr.  Coyle  a  more 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  157 

perceptive  glance.  "  I'm  sure  he  wouldn't 
do  anything  dishonorable." 

"  Well — it  won't  look  right.  He  must  be 
made  to  feel  that — work  it  up.  Give  him  a 
comrade's  point  of  view — that  of  a  brother- 
in-arms." 

"  That's  what  I  thought  we  were  going  to 
be !"  young  Lechmere  mused,  romantically, 
much  uplifted  by  the  nature  of  the  mission 
imposed  on  him.  "  He's  an  awfully  good 
sort." 

"  No  one  will  think  so  if  he  backs  out !" 
said  Spencer  Coyle. 

"They  mustn't  say  it  to  me!"  his  pupil 
rejoined,  with  a  flush. 

Mr.  Coyle  hesitated  a  moment,  noting  his 
tone  and  aware  that  in  the  perversity  of 
things,  though  this  young  man  was  a  born 
soldier,  no  excitement  would  ever  attach  to 
his  alternatives  save,  perhaps,  on  the  part  of 
the  nice  girl  to  whom  at  an  early  day  he  was 
sure  to  be  placidly  united.  "  Do  you  like 
him  very  much — do  you  believe  in  him  ?" 

Young  Lechmere's  life  in  these  days  was 
spent  in  answering  terrible  questions;  but 
he  had  never  been  subjected  to  so  queer  an 


158  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

interrogation  as  this.  "  Believe  in  him  ? 
Rather !" 

"Then  save  him !" 

The  poor  boy  was  puzzled,  as  if  it  were 
forced  upon  him  by  this  intensity  that  there 
was  more  in  such  an  appeal  than  could  ap 
pear  on  the  surface ;  and  he  doubtless  felt 
that  he  was  only  entering  into  a  complex 
situation  when,  after  another  moment,  with 
his  hands  in  his  pockets,  he  replied  hope 
fully  but  not  pompously :  "  I  dare  say  I  can 
bring  him  round  !" 


II 


BEFORE  seeing  young  Lechmere,  Mr.  Coyle 
had  determined  to  telegraph  an  inquiry  to 
Miss  Wingrave.  He  had  prepaid  the  an 
swer,  which,  being  promptly  put  into  his 
hand,  brought  the  interview  we  have  just 
related  to  a  close.  He  immediately  drove 
off  to  Baker  Street,  where  the  lady  had 
said  she  awaited  him,  and  five  minutes  after 
he  got  there,  as  he  sat  with  Owen  Win- 
grave's  remarkable  aunt,  he  repeated  over 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  159 

several  times,  in  his  angry  sadness  and  with 
the  infallibility  of  his  experience  :  "  He's  so 
intelligent  —  he's  so  intelligent!"  He  had 
declared  it  had  been  a  luxury  to  put  such  a 
fellow  through. 

"  Of  course  he's  intelligent,  what  else 
could  he  be  ?  We've  never,  that  I  know  of, 
had  but  one  idiot  in  the  family !"  said  Jane 
Wingrave.  This  was  an  allusion  that  Mr. 
Coyle  could  understand,  and  it  brought 
home  to  him  another  of  the  reasons  for  the 
disappointment,  the  humiliation  as  it  were, 
of  the  good  people  at  Paramore,  at  the  same 
time  that  it  gave  an  example  of  the  conscien 
tious  coarseness  he  had  on  former  occasions 
observed  in  his  interlocutress.  Poor  Phil 
ip  Wingrave,  her  late  brother's  eldest  son, 
was  literally  imbecile  and  banished  from 
view ;  deformed,  unsocial,  irretrievable,  he 
had  been  relegated  to  a  private  asylum 
and  had  become  among  the  friends  of  the 
family  only  a  little  hushed  lugubrious  le 
gend.  All  the  hopes  of  the  house,  pictu 
resque  Paramore,  now  unintermittently  old 
Sir  Philip's  rather  melancholy  home  (his  in 
firmities  would  keep  him  there  to  the  last), 


160  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

were  therefore  collected  on  the  second 
boy's  head,  which  nature,  as  if  in  compunc 
tion  for  her  previous  botch,  had,  in  addi 
tion  to  making  it  strikingly  handsome,  filled 
with  marked  originalities  and  talents.  These 
two  had  been  the  only  children  of  the  old 
man's  only  son,  who,  like  so  many  of  his 
ancestors,  had  given  up  a  gallant  young  life 
to  the  service  of  his  country.  Owen  Win- 
grave  the  elder  had  received  his  death-cut, 
in  close-quarters,  from  an  Afghan  sabre ; 
the  blow  had  come  crashing  across  his  skull. 
His  wife,  at  that  time  in  India,  was  about 
to  give  birth  to  her  third  child  ;  and  when 
the  event  took  place,  in  darkness  and  an 
guish,  the  baby  came  lifeless  into  the  world 
and  the  mother  sank  under  the  multiplica 
tion  of  her  woes.  The  second  of  the  little 
boys  in  England,  who  was  at  Paramore  with 
his  grandfather,  became  the  peculiar  charge 
of  his  aunt,  the  only  unmarried  one,  and 
during  the  interesting  Sunday  that,  by  ur 
gent  invitation,  Spencer  Coyle,  busy  as  he 
was,  had,  after  consenting  to  put  Owen 
through,  spent  under  that  roof,  the  cele 
brated  crammer  received  a  vivid  impression 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  j6l 

of  the  influence  exerted  at  least  in  intention 
by  Miss  Wingrave.  Indeed,  the  picture  of 
this  short  visit  remained  with  the  observant 
little  man  a  curious  one  —  the  vision  of  an 
impoverished  Jacobean  house,  shabby  and 
remarkably  "creepy,"  but  full  of  character 
still  and  full  of  felicity  as  a  setting  for  the 
distinguished  figure  of  the  peaceful  old  sol 
dier.  Sir  Philip  Wingrave,  a  relic  rather 
than  a  celebrity,  was  a  small,  brown,  erect 
octogenarian,  with  smouldering  eyes  and  a 
studied  courtesy.  He  liked  to  do  the  di 
minished  honors  of  his  house,  but  even 
when  with  a  shaky  hand  he  lighted  a  bed 
room  candle  for  a  deprecating  guest,  it  was 
impossible  not  to  feel  that  beneath  the  sur 
face  he  was  a  merciless  old  warrior.  The 
eye  of  the  imagination  could  glance  back 
into  his  crowded  Eastern  past — back  at 
episodes  in  which  his  scrupulous  forms 
would  only  have  made  him  more  terrible. 

Mr.  Coyle  remembered  also  two  other  fig 
ures —  a  faded,  inoffensive  Mrs.  Julian,  do 
mesticated  there  by  a  system  of  frequent 
visits  as  the  widow  of  an  officer  and  a  par 
ticular  friend  of  Miss  Wingrave,  and  a  re- 


162  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

markably  clever  little  girl  of  eighteen,  who 
was  this  lady's  daughter,  and  who  struck  the 
speculative  visitor  as  already  formed  for 
other  relations.  She  was  very  impertinent 
to  Owen,  and  in  the  course  of  a  long  walk 
that  he  had  taken  with  the  young  man,  and 
the  effect  of  which,  in  much  talk,  had  been 
to  clinch  his  high  opinion  of  him,  he  had 
learned  (for  Owen  chattered  confidentially) 
that  Mrs.  Julian  was  the  sister  of  a  very 
gallant  gentleman,  Captain  Hume-Walker, 
of  the  Artillery,  who  had  fallen  in  the  Ind 
ian  Mutiny,  and  between  whom  and  Miss 
Wingrave  (it  had  been  that  lady's  one 
known  concession)  a  passage  of  some  deli 
cacy,  taking  a  tragic  turn,  was  believed  to 
have  been  enacted.  They  had  been  en 
gaged  to  be  married,  but  she  had  given  way 
to  the  jealousy  of  her  nature — had  broken 
with  him  and  sent  him  off  to  his  fate,  which 
had  been  horrible.  A  passionate  sense  of 
having  wronged  him,  a  hard  eternal  remorse 
had  thereupon  taken  possession  of  her,  and 
when  his  poor  sister,  linked  also  to  a  soldier, 
had  by  a  still  heavier  blow  been  left  almost 
without  resources,  she  had  devoted  herself 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  163 

charitably  to  a  long  expiation.  She  had 
sought  comfort  in  taking  Mrs.  Julian  to  live 
much  of  the  time  at  Paramore,  where  she 
became  an  unremunerated  though  not  un- 
criticised  house-keeper,  and  Spencer  Coyle 
suspected  that  it  was  a  part  of  this  comfort 
that  she  could  at  her  leisure  trample  on  her. 
The  impression  of  Jane  Wingrave  was  not 
the  faintest  he  had  gathered  on  that  in 
tensifying  Sunday  —  an  occasion  singularly 
tinged  for  him  with  the  sense  of  bereave 
ment  and  mourning  and  memory,  of  names 
never  mentioned,  of  the  far-away  plaint  of 
widows  and  the  echoes  of  battles  and  bad 
news.  It  was  all  military  indeed,  and  Mr. 
Coyle  was  made  to  shudder  a  little  at  the 
profession  of  which  he  helped  to  open  the 
door  to  harmless  young  men.  Miss  Win- 
grave,  moreover,  might  have  made  such  a 
bad  conscience  worse — so  cold  and  clear  a 
good  one  looked  at  him  out  of  her  hard, 
fine  eyes,  and  trumpeted  in  her  sonorous 
voice. 

She  was  a  high,  distinguished  person  ; 
angular  but  not  awkward,  with  a  large  fore 
head  and  abundant  black  hair,  arranged 


164  OWEN   WINGRAVE 

like  that  of  a  woman  conceiving,  perhaps 
excusably,  of  her  head  as  "  noble,"  and 
irregularly  streaked  to-day  with  white.  If, 
however,  she  represented  for  Spencer  Coyle 
the  genius  of  a  military  race,  it  was  not  that 
she  had  the  step  of  a  grenadier  or  the 
vocabulary  of  a  camp-follower  ;  it  was  only 
that  such  sympathies  were  vividly  implied 
in  the  general  fact  to  which  her  very  pres 
ence  and  each  of  her  actions  and  glances 
and  tones  were  a  constant  and  direct 
allusion  —  the  paramount  valor  of  her  fam 
ily.  If  she  was  military,  it  was  because  she 
sprang  from  a  military  house  and  because 
she  wouldn't  for  the  world  have  been  any 
thing  but  what  the  Wingraves  had  been. 
She  was  almost  vulgar  about  her  ancestors ; 
and  if  one  had  been  tempted  to  quarrel 
with  her,  one  would  have  found  a  fair  pre 
text  in  her  defective  sense  of  proportion. 
This  temptation,  however,  said  nothing  to 
Spencer  Coyle,  for  whom,  as  a  strong  char 
acter  revealing  itself  in  color  and  sound, 
she  was  as  a  spectacle,  and  who  was  glad  to 
regard  her  as  a  force  exerted  on  his  own  side. 
He  wished  her  nephew  had  more  of  her 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  165 

narrowness  instead  of  being  almost  cursed 
with  the  tendency  to  look  at  things  in  their 
relations.  He  wondered  why,  when  she 
came  up  to  town,  she  always  resorted  to 
Baker  Street  for  lodgings.  He  had  never 
known  nor  heard  of  Baker  Street  as  a  resi 
dence — he  associated  it  only  with  bazaars 
and  photographers.  He  divined  in  her  a 
rigid  indifference  to  everything  that  was 
not  the  passion  of  her  life.  Nothing  really 
mattered  to  her  but  that,  and  she  would 
have  occupied  apartments  in  Whitechapel 
if  they  had  been  a  feature  in  her  tactics. 
She  had  received  her  visitor  in  a  large,  cold, 
faded  room,  furnished  with  slippery  seats 
and  decorated  with  alabaster  vases  and 
wax-flowers.  The  only  little  personal  com 
fort  for  which  she  appeared  to  have  looked 
out  was  a  fat  catalogue  of  the  Army  and 
Navy  Stores,  which  reposed  on  a  vast, 
desolate  table-cover  of  false  blue.  Her 
clear  forehead — it  was  like  a  porcelain 
slate,  a  receptacle  for  addresses  and  sums 
— had  flushed  when  her  nephew's  crammer 
told  her  the  extraordinary  news ;  but  he 
saw  she  was  fortunately  more  angry  than 


166  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

frightened.  She  had  essentially,  she  would 
always  have,  too  little  imagination  for  fear, 
and  the  healthy  habit  moreover  of  facing 
everything  had  taught  her  that  the  occasion 
usually  found  her  a  quantity  to  reckon  with. 
Mr.  Coyle  saw  that  her  only  fear  at  present 
could  have  been  that  of  not  being  able  to 
prevent  her  nephew  from  being  absurd,  and 
that  to  such  an  apprehension  as  this  she 
was  in  fact  inaccessible.  Practically,  too, 
she  was  not  troubled  by  surprise ;  she 
recognized  none  of  the  futile,  none  of  the 
subtle  sentiments.  If  Philip  had  for  an  hour 
made  a  fool  of  himself,  she  was  angry — dis 
concerted  as  she  would  have  been  on  learn 
ing  that  he  had  confessed  to  debts  or 
fallen  in  love  with  a  low  girl.  But  there  re 
mained  in  any  annoyance  the  saving  fact 
that  no  one  could  make  a  fool  of  her. 

"  I  don't  know  when  I've  taken  such  an 
interest  in  a  young  man  —  I  think  I  never 
have,  since  I  began  to  handle  them,"  Mr. 
Coyle  said.  "  I  like  him,  I  believe  in  him 
— it's  been  a  delight  to  see  how  he  was 
going." 

"Oh,  I  know  how  they  go!"    Miss  Win- 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  167 

grave  threw  back  her  head  with  a  familiar 
briskness,  as  if  a  rapid  procession  of  the 
generations  had  flashed  before  her,  rattling 
their  scabbards  and  spurs.  Spencer  Coyle 
recognized  the  intimation  that  she  had 
nothing  to  learn  from  anybody  about  the 
natural  carriage  of  a  Wingrave,  and  he  even 
felt  convicted  by  her  next  words  of  being, 
in  her  eyes,  with  the  troubled  story  of  his 
check,  his  weak  complaint  of  his  pupil, 
rather  a  poor  creature.  "  If  you  like  him," 
she  exclaimed,  "  for  mercy's  sake,  keep  him 
quiet !" 

Mr.  Coyle  began  to  explain  to  her  that 
this  was  less  easy  than  she  appeared  to 
imagine;  but  he  perceived  that  she  under 
stood  very  little  of  what  he  said.  The 
more  he  insisted  that  the  boy  had  a  kind 
of  intellectual  independence,  the  more  this 
struck  her  as  a  conclusive  proof  that  her 
nephew  was  a  Wingrave  and  a  soldier.  It 
was  not  till  he  mentioned  to  her  that  Owen 
had  spoken  of  the  profession  of  arms  as  of 
something  that  would  be  "  beneath  "  him, 
it  was  not  till  her  attention  was  arrested  by 
this  intenser  light  on  the  complexity  of  the 


168  OWEN   WINGRAVE 

problem,  that  Miss  Wingrave  broke  out,  after 
a  moment's  stupefied  reflection:  "Send  him 
to  see  me  immediately !" 

"That's  exactly  what  I  wanted  to  ask 
your  leave  to  do.  But  I've  wanted  also  to 
prepare  you  for  the  worst,  to  make  you 
understand  that  he  strikes  me  as  really 
obstinate,  and  to  suggest  to  you  that  the 
most  powerful  arguments  at  your  command 
— especially  if  you  should  be  able  to  put 
your  hand  on  some  intensely  practical  one 
— will  be  none  too  effective." 

"I  think  I've  got  a  powerful  argument." 
Miss  Wingrave  looked  very  hard  at  her 
visitor.  He  didn't  know  in  the  least  what 
it  was,  but  he  begged  her  to  put  it  forward 
without  delay.  He  promised  that  their 
young  man  should  come  to  Baker  Street 
that  evening,  mentioning,  however,  that  he 
had  already  urged  him  to  spend  without 
delay  a  couple  of  days  at  Eastbourne.  This 
led  Jane  Wingrave  to  inquire  with  surprise 
what  virtue  there  might  be  in  that  expensive 
remedy,  and  to  reply,  with  decision,  when 
Mr.  Coyle  had  said,  "The  virtue  of  a  little 
rest,  a  little  change,  a  little  relief  to  over- 


OWEN   WINGRAVE  169 

wrought  nerves,"  "  Ah,  don't  coddle  him 
— he's  costing  us  a  great  deal  of  money ! 
I'll  talk  to  him,  and  I'll  take  him  down  to 
Paramore ;  then  I'll  send  him  back  to  you 
straightened  out." 

Spencer  Coyle  hailed  this  pledge  super 
ficially  with  satisfaction,  jjut  before  he  quit 
ted  Miss  Wingrave  he  became  conscious  that 
he  had  really  taken  on  a  new  anxiety  — 
a  restlessness  that  made  him  say  to  him 
self,  groaning  inwardly^  "  Oh,  she  is  a 
grenadier  at  bottom,  and  she'll  have  no 
tact.  I  don't  know  what  her  powerful  argu 
ment  is;  I'm  only  afraid  she'll  be  stupid  and 
make  him  worse.  The  old  man's  better — 
he's  capable  of  tact,  though  he's  not  quite  an 
extinct  volcano.  Owen  will  probably  put 
him  in  a  rage.  In  short,  the  difficulty  is  that 
the  boy's  the  best  of  them." 

Spencer  Coyle  felt  afresh  that  evening  at 
dinner  that  the  boy  was  the  best  of  them. 
Young  Wingrave  (who,  he  was  pleased  to 
observe,  had  not  yet  proceeded  to  the  sea 
side)  appeared  at  the  repast  as  usual,  look 
ing  inevitably  a  little  self-conscious,  but  not 
too  original  for  Bayswater.  He  talked  very 


1 70  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

naturally  to  Mrs.  Coyle,  who  had  thought 
him  from  the  first  the  most  beautiful  young 
man  they  had  ever  received ;  so  that  the 
person  most  ill  at  ease  was  poor  Lechmere, 
who  took  great  trouble,  as  if  from  the 
deepest  delicacy,  not  to  meet  the  eye  of  his 
misguided  mate.  Spencer  Coyle,  however, 
paid  the  penalty  of  his  own  profundity  in 
feeling  more  and  more  worried  ;  he  could  so 
easily  see  that  there  were  all  sorts  of  things 
in  his.  young  friend  that  the  people  of  Para- 
more  wouldn't  understand.  He  began  even 
already  to  react  against  the  notion  of  his 
being  harassed — to  reflect  that,  after  all, 
he  had  a  right  to  his  ideas — to  remember 
that  he  was  of  a  substance  too  fine  to  be 
in  fairness  roughly  used.  It  was  in  this 
way  that  the  ardent  little  crammer,  with 
his  whimsical  perceptions  and  complicated 
sympathies,  was  generally  condemned  not 
to  settle  down  comfortably  either  into  his 
displeasures  or  into  his  enthusiasms.  His 
love  of  the  real  truth  never  gave  him  a 
chance  to  enjoy  them.  He  mentioned  to 
Wingrave  after  dinner  the  propriety  of  an 
immediate  visit  to  Baker  Street,  and  the 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  171 

young  man,  looking  "queer,"  as  he  thought 
— that  is,  smiling  again  with  the  exaggerated 
glory  he  had  shown  in  their  recent  inter 
view — went  off  to  face  the  ordeal.  Spencer 
Coyle  noted  that  he  was  scared  —  he  was 
afraid  of  his  aunt ,  but  somehow  this  didn't 
strike  him  as  a  sign  of  pusillanimity.  He 
should  have  been  scared,  he  was  well 
aware,  in  the  poor  boy's  place,  and  the 
sight  of  his  pupil  marching  up  to  the  battery 
in  spite  of  his  terrors  was  a  positive  sug 
gestion  of  the  temperament  of  the  soldier. 
Many  a  plucky  youth  would  have  shirked 
this  particular  peril. 

"  He  has  got  ideas  !"  young  Lechmere 
broke  out  to  his  instructor  after  his  comrade 
had  quitted  the  house.  He  was  evidently 
bewildered  and  agitated — he  had  an  emo 
tion  to  work  off.  He  had  before  dinner 
gone  straight  at  his  friend,  as  Mr.  Coyle 
had  requested,  and  had  elicited  from  him 
that  his  scruples  were  founded  on  an  over 
whelming  conviction  of  the  stupidity  —  the 
"crass  barbarism"  he  called  it  —  of  war. 
His  great  complaint  was  that  people  hadn't 
invented  anything  cleverer,  and  he  was  deter- 


172  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

mined  to  show,  the  only  way  he  could,  that 
he  wasn't  such  an  ass. 

"  And  he  thinks  all  the  great  generals 
ought  to  have  been  shot,  and  that  Napoleon 
Bonaparte  in  particular,  the  greatest,  was  a 
criminal,  a  monster  for  whom  language  has 
no  adequate  name  !"  Mr.  Coyle  rejoined, 
completing  young  Lechmere's  picture.  "  He 
favored  you,  I  see,  with  exactly  the  same 
pearls  of  wisdom  that  he  produced  for  me. 
But  I  want  to  know  what  jw*  said." 

"  I  said  they  were  awful  rot !"  Young 
Lechmere  spoke  with  emphasis,  and  he  was 
slightly  surprised  to  hear  Mr.  Coyle  laugh 
incongruously  at  this  just  declaration,  and 
then  after  a  moment  continue  : 

"  It's  all  very  curious — I  dare  say  there's 
something  in  it.  But  it's  a  pity!" 

"  He  told  me  when  it  was  that  the  ques 
tion  began  to  strike  him  in  that  light.  Four 
or  five  years  ago,  when  he  did  a  lot  of 
reading  about  all  the  great  swells  and  their 
campaigns  —  Hannibal  and  Julius  Caesar, 
Marlborough  and  Frederick  and  Bonaparte. 
He  has  done  a  lot  of  reading,  and  he  says 
it  opened  his  eyes.  He  says  that  a  wave  of 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  173 

disgust  rolled  over  him.  He  talked  about 
the  'immeasurable  misery'  of  wars,  and 
asked  me  why  nations  don't  tear  to  pieces 
the  governments,  the  rulers  that  go  in  for 
them.  He  hates  poor  old  Bonaparte  worst 
of  all." 

"  Well,  poor  old  Bonaparte  was  a  brute. 
He  was  a  frightful  ruffian,"  Mr.  Coyle  un 
expectedly  declared.  "  But  I  suppose  you 
didn't  admit  that." 

"Oh,  I  dare  say  he  was  objectionable, 
and  I'm  very  glad  we  laid  him  on  his 
back.  But  the  point  I  made  to  Wingrave 
was  that  his  own  behavior  would  excite 
no  end  of  remark."  Young  Lechmere 
hesitated  an  instant,  then  he  added :  "  I 
told  him  he  must  be  prepared  for  the 
worst." 

"  Of  course  he  asked  you  what  you  meant 
by  the  'worst,'"  said  Spencer  Coyle. 

"  Yes,  he  asked  me  that;  and  do  you  know 
what  I  said  ?  I  said  people  would  say  that 
his  conscientious  scruples  and  his  wave 
of  disgust  are  only  a  pretext.  Then  he 
asked,  '  A  pretext  for  what  ?'  " 

"Ah,  he  rather  had  you  there  !"  Mr.  Coyle 


174 


OWEN    WINGRAVE 


exclaimed,  with  a  little  laugh  that  was  mysti 
fying  to  his  pupil. 

"  Not  a  bit— for  I  told  him." 

"  What  did  you  tell  him  ?" 

Once  more,  for  a  few  seconds,  with  his 
conscious  eyes  in  his  instructor's,  the  young 
man  hung  fire. 

"  Why,  what  we  spoke  of  a  few  hours  ago. 
The  appearance  he'd  present  of  not  hav 
ing — "  The  honest  youth  faltered  a  mo 
ment,  then  brought  it  out :  "  The  military 
temperament,  don't  you  know?  But  do 
you  know  what  he  said  to  that  ?"  young 
Lechmere  went  on. 

"Damn  the  military  temperament!"  the 
crammer  promptly  replied. 

Young  Lechmere  stared.  Mr.  Coyle's  tone 
left  him  uncertain  if  he  were  attributing  the 
phrase  to  Wingrave  or  uttering  his  own 
opinion,  but  he  exclaimed  : 

"  Those  were  exactly  his  words  !" 

"  He  doesn't  care,"  said  Mr.  Coyle. 

"Perhaps  not.  But  it  isn't  fair  for  him  to 
abuse  us  fellows.  I  told  him  it's  the  finest 
temperament  in  the  world,  and  that  there's 
nothing  so  splendid  as  pluck  and  heroism." 


OWEN   WINGRAVE  175 

"  Ah  !  there  you  had  him.''' 

"  I  told  him  it  was  unworthy  of  him  to 
abuse  a  gallant,  a  magnificent  profession. 
I  told  him  there's  no  type  so  fine  as  that  of 
the  soldier  doing  his  duty." 

"That's  essentially  your  type,  my  dear 
boy."  Young  Lechmere  blushed ;  he  couldn't 
make  out  (and  the  danger  was  naturally  un 
expected  to  him)  whether  at  that  moment 
he  didn't  exist  mainly  for  the  recreation  of 
his  friend.  But  he  was  partly  reassured  by 
the  genial  way  this  friend  continued,  laying 
a  hand  on  his  shoulder  :  "  Keep  at  him  that 
way!  we  may  do  something.  I'm  extremely 
obliged  to  you."  Another  doubt,  however, 
remained  unassuaged — a  doubt  which  led 
him  to  exclaim  to  Mr.  Coyle,  before  they 
dropped  the  painful  subject, 

"  He  doesn't  care  !  But  it's  awfully  odd 
he  shouldn't !" 

"  So  it  is ;  but  remember  what  you  said 
this  afternoon — I  mean  about  your  not  ad 
vising  people  to  make  insinuations  to yoti" 

"I  believe  I  should  knock  a  fellow  down!" 
said  young  Lechmere.  Mr.  Coyle  had  got 
up ;  the  conversation  had  taken  place  while 


176  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

they  sat  together  after  Mrs.  Coyle's  with 
drawal  from  the  dinner-table,  and  the  head 
of  the  establishment  administered  to  his  dis 
ciple,  on  principles  that  were  a  part  of  his 
thoroughness,  a  glass  of  excellent  claret. 
The  disciple,  also  on  his  feet,  lingered  an 
instant,  not  for  another  "  go,"  as  he  would 
have  called  it,  at  the  decanter,  but  to  wipe 
his  microscopic  mustache  with  prolonged 
and  unusual  care.  His  companion  saw  he 
had  something  to  bring  out  which  required 
a  final  effort,  and  waited  for  him  an  instant 
with  a  hand  on  the  knob  of  the  door.  Then, 
as  young  Lechmere  approached  him,  Spen 
cer  Coyle  grew  conscious  of  an  unwonted 
intensity  in  the  round  and  ingenuous  face. 
The  boy  was  nervous,  but  he  tried  to  be 
have  like  a  man  of  the  world.  "  Of  course, 
it's  between  ourselves,"  he  stammered,  "and 
I  wouldn't  breathe  such  a  word  to  any  one 
who  wasn't  interested  in  poor  Wingrave  as 
you  are.  But  do  you  think  he  funks  it  ?" 

Mr.  Coyle  looked  at  him  so  hard  for  an 
instant  that  he  was  visibly  frightened  at 
what  he  had  said. 

"  Funks  it !     Funks  what  ?" 


OWEN    WINGRAVE 


177 


"Why,  what  we're  talking  about  —  the 
service."  Young  Lechmere  gave  a  little 
gulp,  and  added,  with  a  naivete  almost  pa 
thetic  to  Spencer  Coyle,  "  The  dangers,  you 
know !" 

"  Do  you  mean  he's  thinking  of  his  skin?" 

Young  Lechmere's  eyes  expanded  appeal- 
ingly,  and  what  his  instructor  saw  in  his 
pink  face — he  even  thought  he  saw  a  tear — 
was  the  dread  of  a  disappointment  shocking 
in  the  degree  in  which  the  loyalty  of  admi 
ration  had  been  great. 

"  Is  he — is  he  afraid?'  repeated  the  hon 
est  lad,  with  a  quaver  of  suspense. 

"  Dear  no  !"  said  Spencer  Coyle,  turning 
his  back. 

Young  Lechmere  felt  a  little  snubbed  and 
even  a  little  ashamed;  but  he  felt  still  more 
relieved. . 


Ill 


LESS  than  a  week  after  this  Spencer 
Coyle  received  a  note  from  Miss  Wingrave, 
who  had  immediately  quitted  London  with 
her  nephew.  She  proposed  that  he  should 


I78  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

come  down  to  Paramore  for  the  following 
Sunday — Owen  was  really  so  tiresome.    On 
the  spot,  in  that  house   of  examples  and 
memories,    and    in    combination    with    her 
poor  dear  father,  who  was  "dreadfully  an 
noyed,"  it  might  be  worth  their  while   to 
make  a  last  stand.    Mr.  Coyle  read  between 
the  lines  of  this  letter  that  the  party  at  Par 
amore  had  got  over  a  good  deal  of  ground 
since  Miss  Wingrave,  in  Baker  Street,  had 
treated  his  despair  as  superficial.     She  was 
not  an  insinuating  woman,  but  she  went  so 
far  as  to  put  the  question  on  the  ground  of 
his  conferring  a  particular  favor  on  an  af 
flicted  family ;  and  she  expressed  the  pleas 
ure  it  would  give  them  if  he  should  be  ac 
companied  by  Mrs.  Coyle,  for  whom  she 
enclosed  a  separate  invitation.     She  men 
tioned  that  she  was  also  writing,  subject  to 
Mr.  Coyle's  approval,  to  young  Lechmere. 
She  thought  such  a  nice,  manly  boy  might 
do  her  wretched  nephew  some  good.     The 
celebrated  crammer  determined  to  embrace 
this  opportunity ;  and  now  it  was  the  case 
not  so  much  that  he  was  angry  as  that  he 
was  anxious.     As  he  directed  his  answer  to 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  179 

Miss  Wingrave's  letter  he  caught  himself 
smiling  at  the  thought  that  at  bottom  he 
was  going  to  defend  his  young  friend  rather 
than  to  attack  him.  He  said  to  his  wife, 
who  was  a  fair,  fresh,  slow  woman — a  per 
son  of  much  more  presence  than  himself — 
that  she  had  better  take  Miss  Wingrave  at 
her  word :  it  was  such  an  extraordinary, 
such  a  fascinating  specimen  of  an  old  Eng 
lish  home.  This  last  allusion  was  amicably 
sarcastic ;  he  had  already  accused  the  good 
lady  more  than  once  of  being  in  love  with 
Owen  Wingrave.  She  admitted  that  she 
was,  she  even  gloried  in  her  passion  ;  which 
shows  that  the  subject,  between  them,  was 
treated  in  a  liberal  spirit.  She  carried  out 
the  joke  by  accepting  the  invitation  with 
eagerness.  Young  Lechmere  was  delighted 
to  do  the  same ;  his  instructor  had  good- 
naturedly  taken  the  view  that  the  little 
break  would  freshen  him  up  for  his  last 
spurt. 

It  was  the  fact  that  the  occupants  of 
Paramore  did  indeed  take  their  trouble 
hard  that  struck  Spencer  Coyle  after  he 
had  been  an  hour  or  two  in  that  fine  old 


l8o  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

house.  This  very  short  second  visit,  begin 
ning  on  the  Saturday  evening,  was  to  con 
stitute  the  strangest  episode  of  his  life.  As 
soon  as  he  found  himself  in  private  with  his 
wife — they  had  retired  to  dress  for  dinner — 
they  called  each  other's  attention,  with  ef 
fusion  and  almost  with  alarm,  to  the  sinister 
gloom  that  was  stamped  on  the  place.  The 
house  was  admirable  with  its  old  gray  front, 
which  came  forward  in  wings  so  as  to  form 
three  sides  of  a  square ;  but  Mrs.  Coyle 
made  no  scruple  to  declare  that  if  she  had 
known  in  advance  the  sort  of  impression 
she  was  going  to  receive  she  would  never 
have  put  her  foot  in  it.  She  characterized 
it  as  "  uncanny,"  she  accused  her  husband 
of  not  having  warned  her  properly.  He 
had  mentioned  to  her  in  advance  certain 
facts,  but  while  she  almost  feverishly 
dressed  she  had  innumerable  questions  to 
ask.  He  hadn't  told  her  about  the  girl, 
the  extraordinary  girl,  Miss  Julian — that  is, 
he  hadn't  told  her  that  this  young  lady, 
who  in  plain  terms  was  a  mere  dependent, 
would  be  in  effect,  and  as  a  consequence 
of  the  way  she  carried  herself,  the  most 


OWEN   WINGRAVE  181 

important  person  in  the  house.  Mrs.  Coyle 
was  already  prepared  to  announce  that  she 
hated  Miss  Julian's  affectations.  Her  hus 
band,  above  all,  hadn't  told  her  that  they 
should  find  their  young  charge  looking  five 
years  older. 

"  I  •  couldn't  imagine  that,"  said  Mr. 
Coyle,  "  nor  that  the  character  of  the  crisis 
here  would  be  quite  so  perceptible.  But  I 
suggested  to  Miss  Wingrave  the  other  day 
that  they  should  press  her  nephew  in  real 
earnest,  and  she  has  taken  me  at  my  word. 
They've  cut  off  his  supplies — they're  trying 
to  starve  him  out.  That's  not  what  I  meant 
— but,  indeed,  I  don't  quite  know  to  -  day 
what  I  meant.  Owen  feels  the  pressure, 
but  he  won't  yield."  The  strange  thing 
was  that,  now  that  he  was  there,  the  versa 
tile  little  coach  felt  still  more  that  his  own 
spirit  had  been  caught  up  by  a  wave  of 
reaction.  If  he  was  there  it  was  because 
he  was  on  poor  Owen's  side.  His  whole 
impression,  his  whole  apprehension,  had 
on  the  spot  become  much  deeper.  There 
was  something  in  the  dear  boy's  very  resist 
ance  that  began  to  charm  him.  When  his 


182  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

wife,  in  the  intimacy  of  the  conference  I 
have  mentioned,  threw  off  the  mask  and 
commended  even  with  extravagance  the 
stand  his  pupil  had  taken  (he  was  too  good 
to  be  a  horrid  soldier,  and  it  was  noble  of 
him  to  suffer  for  his  convictions — wasn't 
he  as  upright  as  a  young  hero,  even  though 
as  pale  as  a  Christian  martyr  ?)  the  good 
lady  only  expressed  the  sympathy  which, 
under  cover  of  regarding  his  young  friend 
as  a  rare  exception,  he  had  already  recog 
nized  in  his  own  soul. 

For,  half  an  hour  ago,  after  they  had  had 
superficial  tea  in  the  brown  old  hall  of  the 
house,  his  young  friend  had  proposed  to 
him,  before  going  to  dress,  to  take  a  turn 
outside,  and  had  even,  on  the  terrace,  as 
they  walked  together  to  one  of  the  far  ends 
of  it,  passed  his  hand  entreatingly  into  his 
companion's  arm,  permitting  himself  thus 
a  familiarity  unusual  between  pupil  and 
master,  and  calculated  to  show  that  he  had 
guessed  whom  he  could  most  depend  on  to 
be  kind  to  him.  Spencer  Coyle  on  his 
own  side  had  guessed  something,  so  that  he 
was  not  surprised  at  the  boy's  having  a 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  183 

particular  confidence  to  make.  He  had 
felt  on  arriving  that  each  member  of  the 
party  had  wished  to  get  hold  of  him  first, 
and  he  knew  that  at  that  moment  Jane 
Wingrave  was  peering  through  the  ancient 
blur  of  one  of  the  windows  (the  house  had 
been  modernized  so  little  that  the  thick 
dim  panes  were  three  centuries  old)  to  see 
if  her  nephew  looked  as  if  he  were  poison 
ing  the  visitor's  mind.  Mr.  Coyle  lost  no 
time  therefore  in  reminding  the  youth  (and 
he  took  care  to  laugh  as  he  did  so)  that  he 
had  not  come  down  to  Paramore  to  be  cor 
rupted.  He  had  come  down  to  make,  face 
to  face,  a  last  appeal  to  him — he  hoped  it 
wouldn't  be  utterly  vain.  Owen  smiled 
sadly  as  they  went,  asking  him  if  he  thought 
he  had  the  general  air  of  a  fellow  who  was 
going  to  knock  under. 

"  I  think  you  look  strange  —  I  think 
you  look  ill,"  Spencer  Coyle  said,  very 
honestly.  They  had  paused  at  the  end  of 
the  terrace. 

"  I've  had  to  exercise  a  great  power  of 
resistance,  and  it  rather  takes  it  out  of 
one." 


1 84  OWEN   WINGRAVE 

"  Ah,  my  dear  boy,  I  wish  your  great 
power — for  you  evidently  possess  it — were 
exerted  in  a  better  cause  !" 

Owen  Wingrave  smiled  down  at  his  small 
instructor.  "I  don't  believe  that!"  Then 
he  added,  to  explain  why :  "  Isn't  what  you 
want,  if  you're  so  good  as  to  think  well  of 
my  character,  to  see  me  exert  most  power, 
in  whatever  direction  ?  Well,  this  is  the 
way  I  exert  most."  Owen  Wingrave  went 
on  to  relate  that  he  had  had  some  terrible 
hours  with  his  grandfather,  who  had  de 
nounced  him  in  a  way  to  make  one's  hair 
stand  up  on  one's  head.  He  had  expected 
them  not  to  like  it,  not  a  bit,  but  he  had 
had  no  idea  they  would  make  such  a  row. 
His  aunt  was  different,  but  she  was  equally 
insulting.  Oh,  they  had  made  him  feel 
they  were  ashamed  of  him ;  they  accused 
him  of  putting  a  public  dishonor  on  their 
name.  He  was  the  only  one  who  had  ever 
backed  out  —  he  was  the  first  for  three 
hundred  years.  Every  one  had  known  he 
was  to  go  up,  and  now  every  one  would 
know  he  was  a  young  hypocrite  who  sudden 
ly  pretended  to  have  scruples.  They  talked 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  185 

of  his  scruples  as  you  wouldn't  talk  of  a 
cannibal's  god.  His  grandfather  had  called 
him  outrageous  names.  "  He  called  me — 
he  called  me — "  Here  the  young  man 
faltered,  his  voice  failed  him.  He  looked 
as  haggard  as  was  possible  to  a  young  man 
in  such  magnificent  health. 

"I  probably  know  !"  said  Spencer  Coyle, 
with  a  nervous  laugh. 

Owen  Wingrave's  clouded  eyes,  as  if  they 
were  following  the  far-off  consequences  of 
things,  rested  for  an  instant  on  a  distant 
object.  Then  they  met  his  companion's, 
and  for  another  moment  sounded  them 
deeply.  "  It  isn't  true  —  no,  it  isn't.  It's 
not  that  /" 

"  I  don't  suppose  it  is !  But  what  do  you 
propose  instead  of  it?" 

"  Instead  of  what  ?" 

"Instead  of  the  stupid  solution  of  war. 
If  you  take  that  away,  you  should  suggest  at 
least  a  substitute." 

"  That's  for  the  people  in  charge,  for 
governments  and  cabinets,"  said  Owen 
Wingrave.  "  They'M^.  arrive  soon  enough  at 
a  substitute,  in  the  particular  case,  if  they're 


186  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

made  to  understand  that  they'll  be  hung 
if  they  don't  find  one.  Make  it  a  capital 
crime  —  that'll  quicken  the  wits  of  minis 
ters  !"  His  eyes  brightened  as  he  spoke, 
and  he  looked  assured  and  exalted.  Mr. 
Coyle  gave  a  sigh  of  perplexed  resignation 
— it  was  a  monomania.  He  fancied  after 
this  for  a  moment  that  Owen  was  going  to 
ask  him  if  he  too  thought  he  was  a  coward ; 
but  he  was  relieved  to  observe  that  he 
either  didn't  suspect  him  of  it  or  shrank 
uncomfortably  from  putting  the  question  to 
the  test.  Spencer  Coyle  wished  to  show 
confidence,  but  somehow  a  direct  assurance 
that  he  didn't  doubt  of  his  courage  ap 
peared  too  gross  a  compliment — it  would  be 
like  saying  he  didn't  doubt  of  his  honesty. 
The  difficulty  was  presently  averted  by 
Owen's  continuing  :  "My  grandfather  can't 
break  the  entail ;  but  I  shall  have  nothing 
but  this  place,  which,  as  you  know,  is  small 
and,  with  the  way  rents  are  going,  has 
quite  ceased  to  yield  an  income.  He  has 
some  money- — not  much,  but  such  as  it  is 
he  cuts  me  off.  My  aunt  does  the  same — 
she  has  let  me  know  her  intentions.  She 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  187 

was  to  have  left  me  her  six  hundred  a  year. 
It  was  all  settled  ;  but  now  what's  settled 
is  that  I  don't  get  a  penny  of  it  if  I  give  up 
the  army.  I  must  add,  in  fairness,  that  I 
have  from  my  mother  three  hundred  a  year 
of  my  own.  And  I  tell  you  the  simple 
truth  when  I  say  that  I  don't  care  a  rap  for 
the  loss  of  the  money."  The  young  man 
drew  a  long,  slow  breath,  like  a  creature  in 
pain  ;  then  he  subjoined  :  "  Thafs  not  what 
worries  me  !" 

"  What  are  you  going  to  do  ?"  asked 
Spencer  Coyle. 

"  I  don't  know  ;  perhaps  nothing.  Noth 
ing  great,  at  all  events.  Only  something 
peaceful!" 

Owen  gave  a  weary  smile,  as  if,  worried 
as  he  was,  he  could  yet  appreciate  the  hu 
morous  effect  of  such  a  declaration  from  a 
Wingrave  ;  but  what  it  suggested  to  his 
companion,  who  looked  up  at  him  with  a 
sense  that  he  was  after  all  not  a  Wingrave 
for  nothing,  and  had  a.  military  steadiness 


under  fire,  was  the  exasperation  that  such  a 
programme,  uttered  in  such  a  way  and  strik 
ing  them  as  the  last  word  of  the  inglorious, 


188  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

might  well  have  engendered  on  the  part  of 
his  grandfather  'and  his  aunt.  "  Perhaps 
nothing  " — when  he  might  carry  on  the  great 
tradition  !  Yes,  he  wasn't  weak,  and  he  was 
interesting;  but  there  was  a  point  of  view 
from  which  he  was  provoking.  "  What  is 
it,  then,  that  worries  you?"  Mr.  Coyle  de 
manded. 

"  Oh,  the  house — the  very  air  and  feeling 
of  it.  There  are  strange  voices  in  it  that 
seem  to  mutter  at  me  —  to  say  dreadful 
things  as  I  pass.  I  mean  the  general  con 
sciousness  and  responsibility  of  what  I'm 
doing.  Of  course  it  hasn't  been  easy  for 
me — not  a  bit.  I  assure  you  I  don't  enjoy 
it."  With  a  light  in  them  that  was  like  a 
longing  for  justice,  Owen  again  bent  his 
eyes  on  those  of  the  little  coach  ;  then  he 
pursued :  "  I've  started  up  all  the  old 
ghosts.  The  very  portraits  glower  at  me  on 
the  walls.  There's  one  of  my  great-great 
grandfather  (the  one  the  extraordinary  story 
you  know  is  about — the  old  fellow  who  hangs 
on  the  second  landing  of  the  big  staircase) 
that  fairly  stirs  on  the  canvas — just  heaves 
a  little — when  I  come  near  it.  I  have  to  go 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  189 

up  and  down  stairs — it's  rather  awkward ! 
It's  what  my  aunt  calls  the  family  circle. 
It's  all  constituted  here,  it's  a  kind  of  inde 
structible  presence,  it  stretches  away  into 
the  past,  and  when  I  came  back  with  her 
the  other  day  Miss  Wingrave  told  me  I 
wouldn't  have  the  impudence  to  stand  in 
the  midst  of  it  and  say  such  things.  I  had 
to  say  them  to  my  grandfather;  but  now 
that  I've  said  them,  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
question's  ended.  I  want  to  go  away  —  I 
don't  care  if  I  never  come  back  again." 

"  Oh,  you  are  a  soldier ;  you  must  fight 
it  out !"  Mr.  Coyle  laughed. 

The  young  man  seemed  discouraged  at 
his  levity,  but  as  they  turned  round,  stroll 
ing  back  in  the  direction  from  which  they 
had  come,  he  himself  smiled  faintly  after  an 
instant  and  replied : 

"  Ah,  we're  tainted — all !" 

They  walked  in  silence  part  of  the  way 
to  the  old  portico ;  then  Spencer  Coyle, 
stopping  short  after  having  assured  himself 
that  he  was  at  a  sufficient  distance  from  the 
house  not  to  be  heard,  suddenly  put  the 
question  :  "What  does  Miss  Julian  say?" 


igo  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

"  Miss  Julian  ?"  Owen  had  perceptibly 
colored. 

"  I'm  sure  she  hasn't  concealed  her  opin 
ion." 

"Oh,  it's  the  opinion  of  the  family  circle, 
for  she's  a  member  of  it,  of  course.  And 
then  she  has  her  own  as  well." 

"  Her  own  opinion  ?" 

"  Her  own  family  circle." 

"  Do  you  mean  her  mother — that  patient 

J'    iy?" 
"  I  mean  more  particularly  her  father,  who 
1  in  battle.    And  her  grandfather,  and  his 
:her,  and  her  uncles  and  great -uncles — 
;y  all  fell  in  battle." 
"  Hasn't  the  sacrifice  of  so  many  lives 
been  sufficient?    Why  should  she  sacrifice 
you  r 

11  Oh,  she  hates  me  !"    Owen  declared,  as 
'    they  resumed  their  walk. 

"Ah,  the  hatred  of  pretty  girls  for  fine 
young  men  !"  exclaimed  Spencer  Coyle. 

He  didn't  believe  in  it,  but  his  wife  did, 
it  appeared  perfectly,  when  he  mentioned 
this  conversation  while,  in  the  fashion  that 
has  been  described,  the  visitors  dressed  for 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  igi 

dinner.  Mrs.  Coyle  had  already  discovered 
that  nothing  could  have  been  nastier  than 
Miss  Julian's  manner  to  the  disgraced  youth 
during  the  half-hour  the  party  had  spent  in 
the  hall;  and  it  was  this  lady's  judgment  that 
one  must  have  had  no  eyes  in  one's  head 
not  to  see  that  she  was  already  trying  out 
rageously  to  flirt  with  young  Lechmere.  It 
was  a  pity  they  had  brought  that  silly  boy ; 
he  was  down  in  the  hall  with  her  at  that 
moment.  Spencer  Coyle's  version  was  dif 
ferent;  he  thought  there  were  finer  elements 
involved.  The  girl's  footing  in  the  house 
was  inexplicable  on  any  ground  save  that  of 
her  being  predestined  to  Miss  Wingrave's 
nephew.  As  the  niece  of  Miss  Wingrave's 
own  unhappy  intended  she  had  been  dedi 
cated  early  by  this  lady  to  the  office  of  heal 
ing,  by  a  union  with  Owen,  the  tragic  breach 
that  had  separated  their  elders  ;  and  if,  in 
reply  to  this,  it  was  to  be  said  that  a  girl  of 
spirit  couldn't  enjoy  in  such  a  matter  hav 
ing  her  duty  cut  out  for  her,  Owen's  en 
lightened  friend  was  ready  with  the  argu 
ment  that  a  young  person  in  Miss  Julian's 
position  would  never  be  such  a  fool  as  really 


IQ2 


OWEN    WINGRAVE 


to  quarrel  with  a  capital  chance.  She  was 
familiar  at  Paramore,  and  she  felt  safe ;  there 
fore  she  might  trust  herself  to  the  amuse 
ment  of  pretending  that  she  had  her  option. 
But  it  was  all  innocent  coquetry.  She  had  a 
curious  charm,  and  it  was  vain  to  pretend 
that  the  heir  of  that  house  wouldn't  seem 
good  enough  to  a  girl,  clever  as  she  might 
be,  of  eighteen.  Mrs.  Coyle  reminded  her 
husband  that  the  poor  young  man  was  pre 
cisely  now  not  of  that  house ;  this  problem 
was  among  the  questions  that  exercised 
their  wits  after  the  two  men  had  taken  the 
turn  on  the  terrace.  Spencer  Coyle  told  his 
wife  that  Owen  was  afraid  of  the  portrait  of 
his  great-great-grandfather.  He  would  show 
it  to  her,  since  she  hadn't  noticed  it,  on 
their  way  down-stairs. 

"Why  of  his  great-great-grandfather  more 
than  of  any  of  the  others  ?" 

"  Oh,  because  he's  the  most  formidable. 
He's  the  one  who's  sometimes  seen." 

"  Seen  where  ?"  Mrs.  Coyle  had  turned 
round  with  a  jerk. 

"  In  the  room  he  was  found  dead  in — the 

f^^f^^^ 

••White  Room  they've  always  called  it." 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  193 

"  Do  you  mean  to  say  the  house  has  a 
ghost  f  Mrs.  Coyle  almost  shrieked.  "  You 
brought  me  here  without  telling  me  ?" 

"  Didn't  I  mention  it  after  my  other 
visit  ?" 

"Not  a  word.  You  only  talked  about 
Miss  Wingrave." 

"  Oh,  I  was  full  of  the  story — you  have 
simply  forgotten." 

"  Then  you  should  have  reminded  me  !" 

"  If  I  had  thought  of  it  I  would  have  held 
my  peace,  for  you  wouldn't  have  come." 

"  I  wish,  indeed,  I  hadn't !"  cried  Mrs. 
Coyle.  "  What  is  the  story  ?" 

"  Oh,  a  deed  of  violence  that  took  place 
here  ages  ago.  I  think  it  was  in  George  the 
First's  time.  Colonel  Wingrave,  one  of  their 
ancestors,  struck  in  a  fit  of  passion  one  of 
his  children,  a  lad  just  growing  up,  a  blow 
on  the  head,  of  which  the  unhappy  child 
died.  The  matter  was  hushed  up  for  the 
hour — some  other  explanation  was  put  about. 
The  poor  boy  was  laid  out  in  one  of  those 
rooms  on  the  other  side  of  the  house,  and 
amid  strange,  smothered  rumors  the  funeral 
was  hurried  on.  The  next  morning,  when 


194 


OWEN    WINGRAVE 


the  household  assembled,  Colonel  Wingrave 
was  missing ;  he  was  looked  for  vainly,  and 
at  last  it  occurred  to  some  one  that  he  might 
perhaps  be  in  the  room  from  which  his  child 
had  been  carried  to  burial.  The  seeker 
knocked  without  an  answer — then  opened 
the  door.  Colonel  Wingrave  lay  dead  on 
the  floor,  in  his  clothes,  as  if  he  had  reeled 
and  fallen  back,  without  a  wound,  without 
a  mark,  without  anything  in  his  appearance 
to  indicate  that  he  had  either  struggled  or 
suffered.  He  was  a  strong,  sound  man — 
there  was  nothing  to  account  for  such  a 
catastrophe.  He  is  supposed  to  have  gone 
to  the  room  during  the  night,  just  before 
going  to  bed,  in  some  fit  of  compunction  or 
some  fascination  of  dread.  It  was  only  after 
this  that  the  truth  about  the  boy  came  out. 
But  no  one  ever  sleeps  in  the  room." 

Mrs.  Coyle  had  fairly  turned  pale.  "  I 
hope  not !  Thank  Heaven  they  haven't  put 
us  there !" 

"  We're  at  a  comfortable  distance ;  but 
I've  seen  the  grewsome  chamber." 

"  Do  you  mean  you've  been  in  it  ?" 

"  For   a   few   moments.     They're   rather 


OWEN    WINGRAVE 


195 


proud  of  it,  and  my  young  friend  showed  it 
to  me  when  I  was  here  before. 

Mrs.  Coyle  stared.  "  And  what  is  it 
like  ?" 

"  Simply  like  an  empty,  dull,  old-fashioned 
bedroom,  rather  big,  with  the  things  of  the 
'  period '  in  it.  It's  panelled  from  floor  to 
ceiling,  and  the  panels  evidently,  years  and 
years  ago,  were  painted  white/  But  the 
paint  has  darkened  with  time,  and  there  are 
three  or  four  quaint  little  ancient '  samplers,' 
framed  and  glazed,  hung  on  the  walls." 

Mrs.  Coyle  looked  round  with  a  shudder. 
"  I'm  glad  there  are  no  samplers  here !  I 
never  heard  anything  so  jumpy !  Come 
down  to  dinner." 

On  the  staircase,  as  they  went  down,  her 
husband  showed  her  the  portrait  of  Colonel 
Wingrave — rather  a  vigorous  representation, 
for  the  place  and  period,  of  a  gentleman 
with  a  hard,  handsome  face,  in  a  red  coat 
and  a  peruke.  Mrs.  Coyle  declared  that 
his  descendant  Sir  Philip  was  wonderfully 
like  him ;  and  her  husband  could  fancy, 
though  he  kept  it  to  himself,  that  if  one 
should  have  the  courage  to  walk  about  the 


196  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

old  corridors  of  Paramore  at  night  one  might 
meet  a  figure  that  resembled  him  roaming, 
with  the  restlessness  of  a  ghost,  hand  in 
hand  with  the  figure  of  a  tall  boy.  As  he 
proceeded  to  the  drawing-room  with  his  wife 
he  found  himself  suddenly  wishing  that  he 
had  made  more  of  a  point  of  his  pupil's 
going  to  Eastbourne.  The  evening,  however, 
seemed  to  have  taken  upon  itself  to  dissi 
pate  any  such  whimsical  forebodings,  for 
the  grimness  of  the  family  circle,  as  Spencer 
Coyle  had  preconceived  its  composition, 
was  mitigated  by  an  infusion  of  the  "neigh 
borhood."  The  company  at  dinner  was  re 
cruited  by  two  cheerful  couples  —  one  of 
them  the  vicar  and  his  wife,  and  by  a  silent 
young  man  who  had  come  down  to  fish. 
This  was  a  relief  to  Mr.  Coyle,  who  had 
begun  to  wonder  what  was  after  all  expected 
of  him,  and  why  he  had  been  such  a  fool  as 
to  come,  and  who  now  felt  that  for  the  first 
hours  at  least  the  situation  would  not  have 
directly  to  be  dealt  with.  Indeed,  he  found, 
as  he  had  found  before,  sufficient  occupa 
tion  for  his  ingenuity  in  reading  the  various 
symptoms  of  which  the  picture  before  him 


OWEN    WINGRAVE 


197 


was  an  expression.  He  should  probably 
have  an  irritating  day  on  the  morrow;  he 
foresaw  the  difficulty  of  the  long,  decorous 
Sunday,  and  how  dry  Jane  Wingrave's  ideas, 
elicited  in  a  strenuous  conference,  would 
taste.  She  and  her  father  would  make  him 
feel  that  they  depended  upon  him  for  the 
impossible,  and  if  they  should  try  to  associ 
ate  him  with  a  merely  stupid  policy  he  might 
end  by  telling  them  what  he  thought  of  it — 
an  accident  not  required  to  make  his  visit  a 
sensible  mistake.  The  old  man's  actual 
design  was  evidently  to  let  their  friends  see 
in  it  a  positive  mark  of  their  being  all  right. 
The  presence  of  the  great  London  coach 
was  tantamount  to  a  profession  of  faith  in 
the  results  of  the  impending  examination. 
It  had  clearly  been  obtained  from  Owen, 
rather  to  Spencer  Coyle's  surprise,  that  he 
would  do  nothing  to  interfere  with  the  ap 
parent  harmony.  He  let  the  allusions  to  his 
hard  work  pass  and,  holding  his  tongue 
about  his  affairs,  talked  to  the  ladies  as 
amicably  as  if  he  had  not  been  "  cut  off." 
When  Spencer  Coyle  looked  at  him  once 
or  twice  across  the  table,  catching  his  eye, 


198  OWEN   WINGRAVE 

which  showed  an  indefinable  passion,  he 
saw  a  puzzling  pathos  in  his  laughing  face ; 
one  couldn't  resist  a  pang  for  a  young  lamb 
so  visibly  marked  for  sacrifice.  "  Hang  him 
—  what  a  pity  he's  such  a  fighter!"  he 
privately  sighed,  with  a  want  of  logic  that 
was  only  superficial. 

This  idea,  however,  would  have  absorbed 
him  more  if  so  much  of  his  attention  had 
not  been  given  to  Kate  Julian,  who,  now 
that  he  had  her  well  before  him,  struck  him 
as  a  remarkable  and  even  as  a  possibly  fas 
cinating  young  woman.  The  fascination  re 
sided  not  in  any  extraordinary  prettiness, 
for  if  she  was  handsome,  with  her  long 
Eastern  eyes,  her  magnificent  hair,  and  her 
general  unabashed  originality,  he  had  seen 
complexions  rosier  and  features  that  pleased 
him  more  ;  it  resided  in  a  strange  impression 
that  she  gave  of  being  exactly  the  sort  of 
person  whom,  in  her  position,  common  con 
siderations,  those  of  prudence  and  perhaps 
even  a  little  those  of  decorum,  would  have 
enjoined  on  her  not  to  be.  She  was  what 
was  vulgarly  termed  a  dependant — penni 
less,  patronized,  tolerated ;  but  something  in 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  199 

her  aspect  and  manner  signified  that,  if  her 
situation  was  inferior,  her  spirit,  to  make 
up  for  it,  was  above  precautions  or  submis 
sions.  It  was  not  in  the  least  that  she 
was  aggressive,  she  was  too  indifferent  for 
that;  it  was  only  as  if,  having  nothing  either 
to  gain  or  to  lose,  she  could  afford  to  do  as 
she  liked.  It  occurred  to  Spencer  Coyle 
that  she  might  really  have  had  more  at  stake 
than  her  imagination  appeared  to  take  ac 
count  of ;  whatever  it  was,  at  any  rate,  he  had 
never  seen  a  young  woman  at  less  pains  to 
be  on  the  safe  side.  He  wondered  inevit 
ably  how  the  peace  was  kept  between  Jane 
Wingrave  and  such  an  inmate  as  this ;  but 
those  questions  of  course  were  unfathom 
able  deeps.  Perhaps  Kate  Julian  lorded  it 
even  over  her  protectress.  The  other  time 
he  was  at  Paramore  he  had  received  an  im 
pression  that,  with  Sir  Philip  beside  her,  the 
girl  could  fight  with  her  back  to  the  wall. 
She  amused  Sir  Philip,  she  charmed  him, 
and  he  liked  people  who  weren't  afraid ;  be 
tween  him  and  his  daughter,  moreover,  there 
was  no  doubt  which  was  the  higher  in  com 
mand.  Miss  Wingrave  took  many  things 


200  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

for  granted,  and  most  of  all  the  rigor  of 
discipline  and  the  fate  of  the  vanquished 
and  the  captive. 

But  between  their  clever  boy  and  so  orig 
inal  a  companion  of  his  childhood  what  odd 
relation  would  have  grown  up?  It  couldn't 
be  indifference,and  yet  on  the  part  of  happy, 
handsome,  youthful  creatures  it  was  still 
less  likely  to  be  aversion.  They  weren't 
Paul  and  Virginia,  but  they  must  have  had 
their  common  summer  and  their  idyl ;  no 
nice  girl  could  have  disliked  such  a  nice 
fellow  for  anything  but  not  liking  her,  and 
no  nice  fellow  could  have  resisted  such  pro 
pinquity.  Mr.  Coyle  remembered  indeed 
that  Mrs.  Julian  had  spoken  to  him  as  if  the 
propinquity  had  been  by  no  means  constant, 
owing  to  her  daughter's  absences  at  school, 
to  say  nothing  of  Owen's  ;  her  visits  to  a 
few  friends  who  were  so  kind  as  to  "  take 
her"  from  time  to  time;  her  sojourns  in 
London — so  difficult  to  manage,  but  still 
managed  by  God's  help — for  "advantages," 
for  drawing  and  singing,  especially  drawing, 
or  rather  painting  in  oils,  in  which  she  had 
had  immense  success.  But  the  good  lady 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  2OI 

had  also  mentioned  that  the  young  people 
were  quite  brother  and  sister,  which  was  a 
little,  after  all,  like  Paul  and  Virginia. 
Mrs.  Coyle  had  been  right,  and  it  was  ap 
parent  that  Virginia  was  doing  her  best  to 
make  the  time  pass  agreeably  for  young 
Lechmere.  There  was  no  such  whirl  of 
conversation  as  to  render  it  an  effort  for 
Mr.  Coyle  to  reflect  on  these  things,  for  the 
tone  of  the  occasion,  thanks  principally  to 
the  other  guests,  was  not  disposed  to  stray 
—  it  tended  to  the  repetition  of  anecdote 
and  the  discussion  of  rents,  topics  that 
huddled  together  like  uneasy  animals.  He 
could  judge  how  intensely  his  hosts  wished 
the  evening  to  pass  off  as  if  nothing  had 
happened  ;  and  this  gave  him  the  measure 
of  their  private  resentment.  Before  dinner 
was  over  he  found  himself  fidgetty  about 
his  second  pupil.  Young  Lechmere,  since 
he  began  to  cram,  had  done  all  that  might 
have  been  expected  of  him ;  but  this 
couldn't  blind  his  instructor  to  a  present 
perception  of  his  being  in  moments  of  re 
laxation  as  innocent  as  a  babe.  Mr.  Coyle 
had  considered  that  the  amusements  of 


202  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

Paramore  would  probably  give  him  a  fillip, 
and  the  poor  fellow's  manner  testified  to 
the  soundness  of  the  forecast.  The  fillip 
had  been  unmistakably  administered ;  it 
had  come  in  the  form  of  a  revelation.  The 
light  on  young  Lechmere's  brow  announced 
with  a  candor  that  was  almost  an  appeal 
for  compassion,  or  at  least  a  deprecation  of 
ridicule,  that  he  had  never  seen  anything 
like  Miss  Julian. 


IV 


IN  the  drawing-room  after  dinner  the  girl 
found  an  occasion  to  approach  Spencer 
Coyle.  She  stood  before  him  a  moment, 
smiling  while  she  opened  and  shut  her  fan, 
and  then  she  said,  abruptly,  raising  her 
strange  eyes :  "  I  know  what  you've  come 
for ;  but  it  isn't  any  use." 

"I've  come  to  look  after  you  a  little. 
Isn't  that  any  use  ?" 

"  It's  very  kind.  But  I'm  not  the  ques 
tion  of  the  hour.  You  won't  do  anything 
with  Owen." 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  203 

Spencer  Coyle  hesitated  a  moment. 
"  What  will  you  do  with  his  young  friend  ?" 

She  stared,  looked  round  her. 

"  Mr.  Lechmere  ?  Oh,  poor  little  lad  ! 
We've  been  talking  about  Owen.  He  ad 
mires  him  so." 

"  So  do  I.     I  should  tell  you  that." 

"  So  do  we  all.  That's  why  we're  in  such 
despair." 

"  Personally,  then,  you'd  like  him  to  be  a 
soldier  ?"  Spencer  Coyle  inquired. 

"  I've  quite  set  my  heart  on  it.  I  adore 
the  army,  and  I'm  awfully  fond  of  my  old 
playmate,"  said  Miss  Julian. 

Her  interlocutor  remembered  the  young 
man's  own  different  version  of  her  attitude ; 
but  he  judged  it  loyal  not  to  challenge  the 
girl. 

"  It's  not  conceivable  that  your  old  play 
mate  shouldn't  be  fond  of  you.  He  must 
therefore  wish  to  please  you  ;  and  I  don't 
see  why — between  you — you  don't  set  the 
matter  right." 

"  Wish  to  please  me !"  Miss  Julian  ex 
claimed.  "  I'm  sorry  to  say  he  shows  no 
such  desire.  He  thinks  me  an  impudent 


204  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

wretch.  I've  told  him  what  I  think  of  him, 
v  and  he  simply  hates  me." 

"  But  you  think  so  highly  !  You  just  told 
me  you  admire  him." 

"  His  talents,  his  possibilities,  yes  ;  even 
V-  >  his  appearance,  if  I  may  allude  to  such  a  mat 
ter.  But  I  don't  admire  his  present  behavior." 

"  Have  you  had  the  question  out  with 
him  ?"  Spencer  Coyle  asked. 

"  Oh  yes  ;  I've  ventured  to  be  frank — the 
occasion  seemed  to  excuse  it.  He  couldn't 
like  what  I  said." 

"  What  did  you  say  ?" 

Miss  Julian,  thinking  a  moment,  opened 
and  shut  her  fan  again. 

"Why,  that  such  conduct  isn't  that  of  a 
gentleman !" 

After  she  had  spoken  her  eyes  met  Spen 
cer  Coyle's,  who  looked  into  their  charm 
ing  depths. 

"  Do  you  want,  then,  so  much  to  send  him 
off  to  be  killed  ?" 

"  How  odd  for  you  to  ask  that — in  such  a 
way  !"  she  replied,  with  a  laugh.  "  I  don't 
understand  your  position  ;  I  thought  your 
line  was  to  make  soldiers  !" 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  205 

"  You  should  take  my  little  joke.  But, 
as  regards  Owen  Wingrave,  there's  no 
,  'making' needed,"  Mr.  Coyle  added.  "To 
'  my  sense"  —  the  little  crammer  paused  a 
moment,  as  if  with  a  consciousness  of  re 
sponsibility  for  his  paradox — "to  my  sense 
he  is,  in  a  high  sense  of  the  term,  a  fighting 
man." 

"  Ah,  let  him  prove  it !"  the  girl  ex- 
"claimed,  turning  away. 

Spencer  Coyle  let  her  go ;  there  was 
something  in  her  tone  that  annoyed  and 
even  a  little  shocked  him.  There  had  evi 
dently  been  a  violent  passage  between  these 
young  people,  and  the  reflection  that  such 
a  matter  was,  after  all,  none  of  his  business 
only  made  him  more  sore.  It  was  indeed 
a  military  house,  and  she  was,  at  any  rate,  a 
person  who  placed  her  ideal  of  manhood 
(young  persons  doubtless  always  had  their 
ideals  of  manhood)  in  the  type  of  the 
belted  warrior.  It  was  a  taste  like  an 
other  ;  but,  even  a  quarter  of  an  hour  later, 
finding  himself  near  young  Lechmere,  in 
whom  this  type  was  embodied,  Spencer 
Coyle  was  still  so  ruffled  that  he  addressed 


206  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

the  innocent  lad  with  a  certain  magisterial 
dryness.  "  You're  not  to  sit  up  late,  you 
know.  That's  not  what  I  brought  you 
down  for."  The  dinner-guests  were  taking 
leave  and  the  bedroom  candles  twinkled  in 
a  monitory  row.  Young  Lechmere,  how 
ever,  was  too  agreeably  agitated  to  be  ac 
cessible  to  a  snub :  he  had  a  happy  pre 
occupation  which  almost  engendered  a  grin. 

"I'm  only  too  eager  for  bedtime.  Do 
you  know  there's  an  awfully  jolly  room  ?" 

"  Surely  they  haven't  put  you  there  ?" 

"  No,  indeed ;  no  one  has  passed  a  night 
in  it  for  ages.  But  that's  exactly  what  I 
want  to  do — it  would  be  tremendous  fun." 

"  And  have  you  been  trying  to  get  Miss 
Julian's  permission  ?" 

"  Oh,  she  can't  give  leave,  she  says.  But 
she  believes  in  it,  and  she  maintains  that 
no  man  dare." 

"  No  man  shall !  A  man  in  your  critical 
position  in  particular  must  have  a  quiet 
night,"  said  Spencer  Coyle. 

Young  Lechmere  gave  a  disappointed 
but  reasonable  sigh. 

"  Oh,  all  right.     But  mayn't  I  sit  up  for  a 


OWEN   WINGRAVE 


207 


little  go  at  Wingrave  ?     I  haven't  had  any 
yet." 

Mr.  Coyle  looked  at  his  watch. 
"  You  may  smoke  one  cigarette." 
He  felt  a  hand  on  his  shoulder,  and  he 
turned  round  to  see  his  wife  tilting  candle- 
grease  upon  his  coat.  The  ladies  were  go 
ing  to  bed,  and  it  was  Sir  Philip's  inveterate 
hour;  but  Mrs.  Coyle  confided  to  her  hus 
band  that  after  the  dreadful  things  he  had 
told  her  she  positively  declined  to  be  left 
alone,  for  no  matter  how  short  an  interval, 
in  any  part  of  the  house.  He  promised  to 
follow  her  within  three  minutes,  and  after 
the  orthodox  hand-shakes  the  ladies  rustled 
away.  The  forms  were  kept  up  at  Para- 
more  as  bravely  as  if  the  old  house  had  no 
present  heartache.  The  only  one  of  which 
Spencer  Coyle  noticed  the  omission  was 
some  salutation  to  himself  from  Kate 
Julian.  She  gave  him  neither  a  word  nor  a 
glance,  but  he  saw  her  look  hard  at  Owen 
Wingrave.  Her  mother,  timid  and  pitying, 
was  apparently  the  only  person  from  whom 
this  young  man  caught  an  inclination  of  the 
head.  Miss  Wingrave  marshalled  the  three 


208  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

ladies — her  little  procession  of  twinkling 
tapers — up  the  wide  oaken  stairs  and  past 
the  watching  portrait  of  her  ill-fated  ances 
tor.  Sir  Philip's  servant  appeared  and  of 
fered  his  arm  to  the  old  man,  who  turned  a 
perpendicular  back  on  poor  Owen  when  the 
boy  made  a  vague  movement  to  anticipate 
this  office.  Spencer  Coyle  learned  afterwards 
that  before  Owen  had  forfeited  favor  it  had 
always,  when  he  was  at  home,  been  his  priv 
ilege  at  bedtime  to  conduct  his  grandfather 
ceremoniously  to  rest.  Sir  Philip's  habits 
were  contemptuously  different  now.  His 
apartments  were  on  the  lower  floor,  and  he 
shuffled  stiffly  off  to  them  with  his  valet's 
help,  after  fixing  for  a  moment  significantly 
on  the  most  responsible  of  his  visitors  the 
thick  red  ray,  like  the  glow  of  stirred  em 
bers,  that  always  made  his  eyes  conflict 
oddly  with  his  mild  manners.  They  seemed 
to  say  to  Spencer  Coyle,  "  We'll  let  the 
young  scoundrel  have  it  to-morrow !"  One 
might  have  gathered  from  them  that  the 
young  scoundrel,  who  had  now  strolled  to 
the  other  end  of  the  hall,  had  at  least 
forged  a  check.  Mr.  Coyle  watched  him  an 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  209 

instant,  saw  him  drop  nervously  into  a  chair, 
and  then  with  a  restless  movement  get  up. 
The  same  movement  brought  him  back  to 
where  his  late  instructor  stood  addressing 
a  last  injunction  to  young  Lechmere. 

"  I'm  going  to  bed,  and  I  should  like  you 
particularly  to  conform  to  what  I  said  to 
you  a  short  time  ago.  Smoke  a  single 
cigarette  with  your  friend  here,  and  then 
go  to  your  room.  You'll  have  me  down 
on  you  if  I  hear  of  your  having,  during 
the  night,  tried  any  preposterous  games." 
Young  Lechmere,  looking  down  with  his 
hands  in  his  pockets,  said  nothing — he  only 
poked  at  the  corner  of  a  rug  with  his  toe ; 
so  that  Spencer  Coyle,  dissatisfied  with  so 
tacit  a  pledge,  presently  went  on,  to  Owen  : 
"  I  must  request  you,  Wingrave,  not  to 
keep  this  sensitive  subject  sitting  up — and, 
indeed,  to  put  him  to  bed  and  turn  his  key 
in  the  door."  As  Owen  stared  an  instant, 
apparently  not  understanding  the  motive  of 
so  much  solicitude,  he  added :  "  Lechmere 
has  a  morbid  curiosity  about  one  of  your 
legends — of  your  historic  rooms.  Nip  it  in 
the  bud." 


210  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

"Oh,  the  legend's  rather  good,  but  I'm 
afraid  the  room's  an  awful  sell !"  Owen 
laughed. 

"  You  know  you  don't  believe  that,  my 
boy !"  young  Lechmere  exclaimed. 

"  I  don't  think  he  does,"  said  Mr.  Coyle, 
noticing  Owen's  mottled  flush. 

"  He  wouldn't  try  a  night  there  himself !" 
young  Lechmere  pursued. 

"  I  know  who  told  you  that,"  rejoined 
Owen,  lighting  a  cigarette  in  an  embar 
rassed  way  at  the  candle,  without  offering 
one  to  either  of  his  companions. 
-  "Well,  what  if  she  did?"  asked  the 
younger  of  these  gentlemen,  rather  red. 
"  Do  you  want  them  all  yourself  ?"  he  con 
tinued,  facetiously,  fumbling  in  the  cigarette- 
box. 

Owen  Wingrave  only  smoked  quietly ; 
then  he  exclaimed : 

"  Yes — what  if  she  did  ?  But  she  doesn't 
know,"  he  added. 

"  She  doesn't  know  what  ?" 

"  She  doesn't  know  anything  ! — I'll  tuck 
him  in !"  Owen  went  on  gayly,  to  Mr. 
Coyle,  who  saw  that  his  presence,  now  that 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  211 

a  certain  note  had  been  struck,  made  the 
young  men  uncomfortable.  He  was  cu 
rious,  but  there  was  a  kind  of  discretion, 
with  his  pupils,  that  he  had  always  pretend 
ed  to  practise ;  a  discretion  that,  however, 
didn't  prevent  him  as  he  took  his  way  up 
stairs  from  recommending  them  not  to  be 
donkeys. 

At  the  top  of  the  staircase,  to  his  sur 
prise,  he  met  Miss  Julian,  who  was  appar 
ently  going  down  again.  She  had  not  be 
gun  to  undress,  nor  was  she  perceptibly 
disconcerted  at  seeing  him.  She  neverthe 
less,  in  a  manner  slightly  at  variance  with 
the  rigor  with  which  she  had  overlooked 
him  ten  minutes  before,  dropped  the  words, 
"I'm  going  down  to  look  for  something. 
I've  lost  a  jewel." 

"A  jewel?" 

"  A  rather  good  turquoise,  out  of  my  lock 
et.  As  it's  the  only  ornament  I  have  the 
honor  to  possess — "  And  she  passed  down. 

"  Shall  I  go  with  you  and  help  you  ?" 
asked  Spencer  Coyle. 

The  girl  paused  a  few  step  below  him, 
looking  back  with  her  Oriental  eyes. 


212  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

"  Don't  I  hear  voices  in  the  hall  ?" 

"Those  remarkable  young  men  are 
there." 

"  They'll  help  me."  And  Kate  Julian  de 
scended. 

Spencer  Coyle  was  tempted  to  follow  her, 
but  remembering  his  standard  of  tact,  he  re 
joined  his  wife  in  their  apartment.  He  de 
layed,  however,  to  go  to  bed,  and  though  he 
went  into  his  dressing-room,  he  couldn't 
bring  himself  even  to  take  off  his  coat.  He 
pretended  for  half  an  hour  to  read  a  novel ; 
after  which,  quietly,  or  perhaps  I  should 
say  agitatedly,  he  passed  from  the  dressing- 
room  into  the  corridor.  He  followed  this 
passage  to  the  door  of  the  room  which  he 
knew  to  have  been  assigned  to  young  Lech- 
mere,  and  was  comforted  to  see  that  it  was 
closed.  Half  an  hour  earlier  he  had  seen 
it  standing  open ;  therefore  he  could  take 
for  granted  that  the  bewildered  boy  had 
come  to  bed.  It  was  of  this  he  had  wished 
to  assure  himself,  and  having  done  so,  he 
was  on  the  point  of  retreating.  But  at  the 
same  instant  he  heard  a  sound  in  the  room 
— the  occupant  was  doing  to  the  window 


OWEN   WINGRAVE 


213 


something  which  showed  him  that  he  might 
knock  without  the  reproach  of  waking  his 
pupil  up.  Young  Lechmere  came  in  fact 
to  the  door  in  his  shirt  and  trousers.  He 
admitted  his  visitor  in  some  surprise,  and 
when  the  door  was  closed  again  Spencer 
Coyle  said  : 

"  I  don't  want  to  make  your  life  a  bur 
den  to  you,  but  I  had  it  on  my  conscience 
to  see  for  myself  that  you're  not  exposed 
to  undue  excitement." 

"  Oh,  there's  plenty  of  that !"  said  the  in 
genuous  youth.  "  Miss  Julian  came  down 
again." 

"  To  look  for  a  turquoise  ?" 

"  So  she  said." 

"  Did  she  find  it  ?" 

"  I  don't  know.  I  came  up.  I  left  her 
with  poor  Wingrave." 

"  Quite  the  right  thing,"  said  Spencer 
Coyle. 

"  I  don't  know,"  young  Lechmere  re 
peated,  uneasily.  "  I  left  them  quarrelling." 

"What  about?" 

'•  I  don't  understand.  They're  a  quaint 
pair !" 


214  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

Spencer  Coyle  hesitated.  He  had,  fun 
damentally,  principles  and  scruples,  but 
what  he  had  in  particular  just  now  was  a 
curiosity,  or  rather,  to  recognize  it  for  what 
it  was,  a  sympathy,  which  brushed  them 
away. 

"  Does  it  strike  you  that  she's  down  on 
him  ?"  he  permitted  himself  to  inquire. 

"  Rather  ! — when  she  tells  him  he  lies  !" 

"  What  do  you  mean  ?" 

"  Why,  before  me.  It  made  me  leave 
them  ;  it  was  getting  too  hot.  I  stupidly 
brought  up  the  question  of  the  haunted 
room  again,  and  said  how  sorry  I  was  that 
I  had  had  to  promise  you  not  to  try  my 
luck  with  it." 

"  You  can't  pry  about  in  that  gross  way 
in  other  people's  houses — you  can't  take 
such  liberties,  you  know !"  Mr.  Coyle  inter 
jected. 

"  I'm  all  right — see  how  good  I  am.  I 
don't  want  to  go  near  the  place !"  said 
young  Lechmere,  confidingly.  "Miss  Julian 
said  to  me,  '  Oh,  I  dare  say  yoifd  risk  it, 
^  but' — and  she  turned  and  laughed  at  poor 
Owen — '  that's  more  than  we  can  expect  of 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  215 

a  gentleman  who  has  taken  his  extraordi 
nary  line.'  I  could  see  that  something  had 
already  passed  between  them  on  the  sub 
ject — some  teasing  or  challenging  of  hers. 
It  may  have  been  only  chaff,  but  his  chuck 
ing  the  profession  had  evidently  brought 
up  the  question  of  his  pluck." 

"  And  what  did  Owen  say  ?" 

"  Nothing    at    first ;     but    presently    he 

^ brought  out  very  quietly  :  '  I  spent  all  last 
night  in  the  confounded  place.'  We  both 
stared  and  cried  out  at  this,  and  I  asked 
him  what  he  had  seen  there.  He  said  he 
had  seen  nothing,  and  Miss  Julian  replied 
that  he  ought  to  tell  his  story  better  than 
that — he  ought  to  make  something  good  of 
it.  '  It's  not  a  story — it's  a  simple  fact,' 
said  he ;  on  which  she  jeered  at  him  and 
wanted  to  know  why,  if  he  had  done  it,  he 
hadn't  told  her  in  the  morning,  since  he 
knew  what  she  thought  of  him.  'I  know, 
but  I  don't  care,'  said  Wingrave.  This 
made  her  angry,  and  she  asked  him,  quite 
seriously,  whether  he  would  care  if  he 
should  know  she  believed  him  to  be  trying 
to  deceive  us." 


216  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

"  Ah,  what  a  brute !"  cried  Spencer 
Coyle. 

"She's  a  most  extraordinary  girl — I  don't 
know  what  she's  up  to." 

"  Extraordinary  indeed — to  be  romping 
and  bandying  words  at  that  hour  of  the 
night  with  fast  young  men  !" 

Young  Lechmere  reflected  a  moment. 
"I  mean  because  I  think  she  likes  him." 

Spencer  Coyle  was  so  struck  with  this  un 
wonted  symptom  of  subtlety  that  he  flashed 
out :  "  And  do  you  think  he  likes  her?"' 

But  his  interlocutor  only  replied  with  a 
puzzled  sigh  and  a  plaintive  "  I  don't  know 
— I  give  it  up  ! — I'm  sure  he  did  see  some 
thing  or  hear  something,"  young  Lechmere 
added. 

"  In  that  ridiculous  place  ?  What  makes 
you  sure  ?" 

"  I  don't  know — he  looks  as  if  he  had. 
He  behaves  as  if  he  had/' 

"  Why,  then,  shouldn't  he  mention  it  ?" 

Young  Lechmere  thought  a  moment.  "  Per 
haps  it's  too  grewsome !" 

Spencer  Coyle  gave  a  laugh.  "Aren't 
you  glad,  then,  you're  not  in  it  ?" 


OWEN    WINGRAVE  217 

"  Uncommonly !" 

"  Go  to  bed,  you  goose,"  said  Spencer 
Coyle,  with  another  laugh.  "  But,  before  you 
go,  tell  me  what  he  said  when  she  told  him 
he  was  trying  to  deceive  you." 

" '  Take  me  there  yourself,  then,  and  lock 
me  in  !' " 

"  And  did  she  take  him  ?" 

"  I  don't  know — I  came  up." 

Spencer  Coyle  exchanged  a  long  look 
with  his  pupil. 

"  I  don't  think  they're  in  the  hall  now. 
Where's  Owen's  own  room  ?" 

"  I  haven't  the  least  idea." 

Mr.  Coyle  was  perplexed  ;  he  was  in  equal 
ignorance,  and  he  couldn't  go  about  trying 
doors.  He  bade  young  Lechmere  sink  to 
slumber,  and  came  out  into  the  passage. 
He  asked  himself  if  he  should  be  able  to 
find  his  way  to  the  room  Owen  had  for 
merly  shown  him,  remembering  that,  in  com 
mon  with  many  of  the  others,  it  had  its  ancient 
name  painted  upon  it.  But  the  corridors 
of  Paramore  were  intricate ;  moreover,  some 
of  the  servants  would  still  be  up,  and  he 
didn't  wish  to  have  the  appearance  of  roam- 


2l8  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

ing  over  the  house.  He  went  back  to  his 
own  quarters,  where  Mrs.  Coyle  soon  per 
ceived  that  his  inability  to  rest  had  not 
subsided.  As  she  confessed  for  her  own 
part,  in  the  dreadful  place,  to  an  increased 
sense  of  "  creepiness,"  they  spent  the  early 
part  of  the  night  in  conversation,  so  that  a 
portion  of  their  vigil  was  inevitably  beguiled 
by  her  husband's  account  of  his  colloquy 
with  little  Lechmere,  and  by  their  exchange 
of  opinions  upon  it.  Towards  two  o'clock 
Mrs.  Coyle  became  so  nervous  about  their 
persecuted  young  friend,  and  so  possessed 
by  the  fear  that  that  wicked  girl  had  availed 
herself  of  his  invitation  to  put  him  to  an 
abominable  test,  that  she  begged  her  hus 
band  to  go  and  look  into  the  matter,  at 
whatever  cost  to  his  own  equilibrium.  But 
Spencer  Coyle,  perversely,  had  ended,  as 
the  perfect  stillness  of  the  night  settled 
upon  them,  by  charming  himself  into  a  trem 
ulous  acquiescence  in  Owen's  readiness  to 
face  a  formidable  ordeal  —  an  ordeal  the 
more  formidable  to  an  excited  imagination, 
as  the  poor  boy  now  knew  from  the  experi 
ence  of  the  previous  night  how  resolute  an 


OWEN    WINGRAVE 


2ig 


effort  he  should  have  to  make.  "  I  hope  he 
is  there,"  he  said  to  his  wife ;  "it  puts  them 
all  so  in  the  wrong !"  At  any  rate,  he  couldn't 
take  upon  himself  to  explore  a  house  he 
knew  so  little.  He  was  inconsequent  —  he 
didn't  prepare  for  bed.  He  sat  in  the 
dressing-room  with  his  light  and  his  novel, 
waiting  to  find  himself  nodding.  At  last, 
however,  Mrs.  Coyle  turned  over  and  ceased 
to  talk,  and  at  last,  too,  he  fell  asleep  in  his 
chair.  How  long  he  slept  he  only  knew 
afterwards  by  computation  ;  what  he  knew, 
to  begin  with,  was  that  he  had  started  up,  in 
confusion,  with  the  sense  of  a  sudden  ap 
palling  sound.  His  sense  cleared  itself 
quickly,  helped  doubtless  by  a  confirmatory 
cry  of  horror  from  his  wife's  room.  But  he 
gave  no  heed  to  his  wife ;  he  had  already 
bounded  into  the  passage.  There  the  sound 
was  repeated — it  was  the  "  Help  !  help  !"  of 
a  woman  in  agonized  terror.  It  came  from 
a  distant  quarter  of  the  house,  but  the  quar 
ter  was  sufficiently  indicated.  Spencer  Coyle 
rushed  straight  before  him,  with  the  sound 
of  opening  doors  and  alarmed  voices  in  his 
ears,  and  the  faintness  of  the  early  dawn 


220  OWEN    WINGRAVE 

in  his  eyes.  At  a  turn  of  one  of  the  pas 
sages  he  came  upon  the  white  figure  of  a 
girl  in  a  swoon  on  a  bench,  and  in  the  viv 
idness  of  the  revelation  he  read  as  he  went 
that  Kate  Julian,  stricken  in  her  pride  too 
late  with  a  chill  of  compunction  for  what 
she  had  mockingly  done,  had,  after  coming 
to  release  the  victim  of  her  derision,  reeled 
away,  overwhelmed,  from  the  catastrophe 
that  was  her  work — the  catastrophe  that  the 
next  moment  he  found  himself  aghast  at  on 
the  threshold  of  an  open  door.  Owen  Win- 
grave,  dressed  as  he  had  last  seen  him,  lay 
dead  on  the  spot  on  which  his  ancestor  had 
been  found.  He  looked  like  a  young  sol 
dier  on  a  battle-field. 


THE    END 


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